Requiem
by TheSematary'sProgeny
Summary: "There is no right or wrong. Only survival." Godric is ready to let go of the afterlife, but Eric is not, and he will do everything he can to keep his Maker with him. But the kinds of things Godric has done tend to stay with you long after your victims are dead.
1. The Marionette

_Author's Note: This began as a humble novelization of the Dallas scenes in the _True Blood_ episodes "Timebomb" (2x08) and "I Will Rise Up" (2x09), but has slowly morphed into my take on how Eric's moral barriers were broken down as he moved through his life as a vampire and how Godric has come to regret his hand in that__. The memories and moments in this story not seen on the show belong to me. Unfortunately, as much as I can take credit for how adorable he is, Pinocchio does not. Many thanks to irrevocably-twisted for her guidance and support through the years._

* * *

Godric contemplated his victim down the length of his nose, his fangs carefully hidden away behind pursed lips.

The fingers of one hand dug into Gabe Triggs's jaw while the others gripped the back of the man's skull. The skin there was as red and sweat-covered as the man's face, and touching it caused a faint sense of nausea to rise in the back of Death's throat. Gabe's eyebrows were scrunched together; his teeth were pulled back in a grimace of fear and pain. His breath and body stank of spirits.

The appearance was fitting for someone who had been about to commit a crime as heinous as the one Godric was currently in the process of preventing. To think what might have happened to the poor girl...

From her position against the far wall, the fluttering of her heart, the flexing of her throat muscles as she swallowed, and the rustle of cloth as she hastened to make herself once again presentable all held a clarity in the boy's ears that he, at his age, found far from impressive. Yet these were faint in comparison to his prey's heavy gasping and the _thud-thump_ of his circulatory system. From a foot below Godric's own face, even the flickering of Gabe's eyelids was grossly audible.

All drowned the silence which was so difficult for one as old as Godric to find anymore... But, considering the continuous beating of human hearts and the constant in-out of their breath, even when they were still, had there ever truly been such a thing as silence? Or was the concept mere foolery?

And then there was the girl's unabashed scrutiny. The fear mingling with the curiosity on her face was indescribably painful. No one should have to fear the ageless boy anymore.

A melody rose in the back of Death's mind as he considered the fear of ones so young, a supposedly cheerful tune that bore ironically ominous undertones if one sought deeply enough. And with the song came a memory—had it really only occurred three weeks ago, or perhaps a month past? It had seemed the blink of an eye.

"_IIIII've got no strings_

_To hold me down_

_To make me fret, or make me frown_

_I had strings_

_But now I'm free_

_There are no strings on me..."_

* * *

The humans standing sentry before the church, loosely clothed in gray... _sweats_, was that the term?—were armed, cradling crossbows or wooden stakes, their torsos mummified in silver.

Three of them, leaning up against a side entrance, their heads nodding over their armaments.

The hair on their jaws was visibly sparse even at this distance. A fellow human would place them in their mid-twenties at the very latest.

_They are only children..._

What it was that had alerted the youth standing to the right of the door to his presence, Godric would never know. He merely saw the boy's head snap upright, a marionette on a string. The boy's wide eyes grew wider still as they locked on Godric, as if his weak pupils had detected a... well...

What else would a human think they saw emerging from a graveyard, clothed in light, but a ghost?

The boy gulped like a fish—_Holy shit—_raising his stake in one hand while reaching over to wake his dark-haired fellows with the other. These two, instantly alert, raised their weapons in kind. All six forelimbs shook.

The center youth, bespectacled and possessing a thin growth of hair on his upper lip, edged forward, his crossbow directed at Godric's heart. "St-stop right there!"

Godric did. He was separated from them by a few meters of dark green grass, but this was obviously no comfort to them. He held his arms out slightly, palms turned toward the humans in a gesture of peace. "I wish to speak with Mr. Newlin."

The trembling of the group leader's arms increased.

"Please. I mean no one harm." _Only to myself._

His thoughts sounded dull; more and more often he found that the world was dimming around him, losing its color, its very appeal. He heard this distance from reality in his own voice, felt it in his bones, and the tone was what most likely prompted the center youth's next words.

"How do I know you ain't glamourin' me? Or any of us? If a _vamper_ is what you are, that is." The heads of his fellow Soldiers of the Sun bobbed in agreement.

Soldiers of the Sun. Even the children were being praised for acts of murder... "Had I the will, each of you would have died minutes ago. Had I even bothered to glamour you beforehand, it would have been only to toy with you. You would be drugged, oblivious to all but my voice, and no suspicion that your life was in danger would ever cross your mind. And at that point, had you been aware, you would have begged me to kill you."

All three gawked openly at him, sweat shining on their faces, their blood racing with animalistic terror.

Godric felt his eyelids sink to half-mast, as if they were sighing. "If you doubt me still, look into the eyes of your peers and observe their clarity."

Now it was their turn to act as they were bid; apparently seeing no cast over each other's eyes, they quickly returned their gazes to Godric.

"All right." The leader again. "So we ain't been glamoured. But that still don't mean we can trust you."

Godric's eyes sighed again; the statement had been long in coming. It was very difficult to surprise one of his longevity anymore... "If you did not use the chains you wear to bind me, what other purpose would they serve?"

"Huh?" The Soldier's gaze dropped. "_Oh!_ Here, boys—truss 'im up while I cover you." The crossbow was once again directed at the only non-beating heart in the vicinity.

_Why children...?_

The one who had first noticed Godric bound his wrists before him, one crossed over the other in a clumsy mockery of a soldier at ease; the other looped a second chain around his ankles.

Godric was unable to prevent the exposure of his greatest weapons as they snapped into place with a fleshy clicking sound.

And then they were inside the church, inside the basement.

His old eyes were thankful that the fluorescent lighting was low. He could not see through the doors branching off the endless hallways, and he did not want to see. His head sank down toward his chest, eyelids slowly rolling shut, the weight of the earth closing in on him even though it was barricaded by man-made structure. He was so tired... tired not in the physical sense. Yet all he wanted to do was sleep, and bring pain to no one any longer. Sleep forever...

"Hey, man, come on—you're slowing down."

It was such an effort to raise the ball of lead set upon his shoulders... but the realization of who it was that had spoken prodded him into movement.

The youth who had first spotted Godric's emergence from the woods surrounding the church, previously silent.

Godric could only blink at him.

The boy shook his head—"_Vampers_"—and Godric was yanked forward again.

Everything was so faint, so distant—even the mockery of the sun's light was something barely felt on Godric's arms. Such was the fog that had enveloped and become the ageless boy's thoughts...

Dimly he was aware that they had stopped moving. As the lead Soldier's footsteps died away, the ones left behind threw Godric to the floor. He grunted softly on impact, having been unable to brace himself with his hands, and the sound was reflexive. He long suspected he had lost the ability to detect pain.

The ageless boy did not know how long he lay there. He only knew that it was peaceful, and the immobility and the complete lack of responsibility which accompanied it were concepts of such grandeur... The white tile was firm and unyielding against his cheek, nearly hypnotic in its solid tranquility. He knew he would be perfectly content to lie there for eternity, until his blessed executioners came for him and he finally, _finally_ died for the last time—if he could remember what contentment was...

A persistent _tap-tap_ lagged, jittery and off-tempo, behind the boy's returning footsteps. Godric's escorts quickly jerked him upright, and he could not summon the strength to find it strange that this numb semi-awareness was the only thing keeping him on his feet.

The floor had been more comfortable.

Steve Newlin's eyes were lit with a positively manic glee, the grin stretching his cheeks almost too wide for the gesture to be natural. "_Well_," he chuckled softly, "what have we here?"

The youth with the crossbow gestured toward Godric. "This here _vamper_ wants to talk to you, Mr. Newlin sir."

"_Does_ he now?" Godric watched Newlin's eyes as he inspected, literally from head to toe, an image with which the two thousand-year-old being had been confronted for too long a time. The short brown hair, the child-like face, the tired old eyes rimmed red with hunger, the tattoos binding him to memories he had never wished to keep...

Godric blinked. Narcissism, even indirectly summoned, was selfishly unproductive. "Your institution has been greatly observed by our kind."

Newlin's leer widened; he leaned forward slightly. "And I suppose _your kind_ perceive us as a threat?" He spoke slowly, with clear enunciation despite the Southern twang in his voice, as though he were addressing a very young child.

Godric's eyes sighed again. "You cannot argue the feeling is anything but natural." And now he must say what he had come to say, words which had been on his tongue since he first heard of the Fellowship. "I wish to be the sacrifice."

Newlin blinked, his smile faltering. "Sacrifice?"

"On the pyre which is being erected to commemorate the rise of your church."

Newlin's brows drew together. "Why? I would've thought you vampires valued your own damned lives above all else."

Godric blinked once more, slowly. "Would I willingly harm myself in order to seek an audience with you if I still did?"

Newlin's eyes flickered to Godric's smoking wrists; he grimaced slightly before returning his gaze to the ancient one's face. "You're sick of it all, aren't you?" The grin began to reaffirm itself. "The Final Day of Reckoning is coming, and you're too shit-scared to face it!"

The ageless boy could not speak, wondering instead what reaction he would gain if he screamed the truth: I CANNOT FEEL _ANYTHING_ ANYMORE!

But even the one, _especially_ the one, who had followed in his footsteps for a thousand years did not deserve to hear such a cry.

Newlin straightened up as he laughed aloud. "Looks like we got ourselves a centerpiece for our grand celebration!" He called in the direction from which he had come: "Hey, Gabe! Come see what the Good Lord has provided for us through the hard work of your boys!"

And then there he was, standing at Newlin's left shoulder as if he had always been there. The guard dog's eyes were clouded with stupid, primal hate.

Newlin gestured to Godric. "Gabe, this is—I'm sorry," the reverend laughed, "what's your name again?"

The sighing of the eyes. "Godric."

"Gabe, this is Godric. Godric, Gabe. He'll be takin' care of you during your little, ah... _stay_ here."

Gabe joined the Soldiers at Godric's side, nodding to his pupils while keeping his eyes dutifully fixed on Newlin. "Good work, boys. Collect your silver and return to your posts."

The man's voice was expressionless, almost mechanical.

As the Soldier who had first noticed Godric in the cemetery uncoiled the chains from his wrists, the ancient one watched as his skin clung to the deadly ties in strands like bloody spider's silk. Yes, he was certainly beyond pain...

That was the moment when the puppet-child's desperate litany had faded into clarity between his ears:

"_IIIII've got no strings_

_To hold me down_

_To make me fret, or make me frown_

_I had strings_

_But now I'm free_

_There are no strings on me..."_

* * *

And so here they were, roles reversed, all because Gabe had been so foolish as to attempt to vent his rage on an innocent girl.

Godric wrinkled his nose as he tilted the man's head upward, forcing eye contact.

His prey possessed the nerve to make one final, desperate plea for life. "Godric, it's me..."

The ancient one pressed his lips together.

_You have shamed your race._

Godric was well-acquainted with shame. They had been old friends for many years now.

This disgusting creature in no way deserved mercy... but Godric had vowed to himself that he would never again directly cause another's suffering, no matter how much they deserved it.

The resounding _crack_ of Gabe's neck as it snapped was sweet to the ageless boy's ear... The process of mental detachment from the situation was swift and much-needed as Death retracted his fangs. His fingers sprang open, and Gabe crumpled to the floor, eyes wide in death, tongue lolling grotesquely.

Godric forced himself to look at the girl as his instincts cooled. Her interference had not only been foolhardy, it had come at a cost affecting the human and vampire communities as a whole. Yet, as he had overheard, she had acted under another's instruction, and for that he could not reprimand her severely. "You should not have come."

Then, amid cries of surprise and fear, he heard the sound of air rushing at improbable speeds.

A vampire, movements too quick for the human eye to clearly detect.

Something long forgotten stirred within Godric as his head whipped toward the sound. He closed his eyes, and for the first time in nearly seventy years was filled with the impact of the bond that he as a Maker shared with—

_Yes._

Indecisiveness. Desperation. Rage. Pain.

Such pain...

The girl, aware of the sound but of nothing behind it, scrambled to her feet. "Bill?"

"_No."_

Hope. Longing. Sorrow. Joy.

More emotion was contained in that single word than Godric had expressed, experienced, in a very long time...

And the bond thrummed between them: a beating heart, whole and strong.

"I am _here_ my child!"

Godric dipped his head slightly, his eyes attempting to blink though they were still closed.

Softer, full of promise.

"Down here."

He slowly opened his eyes, raised his head, and it was much easier to perform the motions than it would have been a minute ago.

Another rush of air—astonishment, immeasurable elation—and then his progeny was standing in the doorway of their prison.

_Eric._

Godric barely took note of how his child still favored the color black in his clothing, barely took note of how this and how the Viking's fair hair had been modernized. All Godric truly saw were the relief, fear and worry—among deeper, unnameable emotions—lining the face of the one made his.

Eric moved again, blurring time and space, and then he was just over a foot away, gazing down at him, cerulean ice pooling with gray clouds.

"Godric."

Oh, how he did not deserve the gift of his name spoken on the lips of his child, the first true word between them in so long...

He watched Eric drop to one knee before him, the lowering of his gaze keeping exact pace with his other movements as he bowed his head.

Such a display of loyalty, and after so many years...

And Godric knew then who had sent the girl and her unconscious companion. He did not know how he had not even guessed the answer beforehand. It was so obvious...

Which cursed him again the foolish narcissist.

The mistake of a child deserved the rebuke of a father, but because there had been no way for the child to know why the father had done what he did, the rebuke would be gentle. "You were a fool for sending humans after me."

"I had no other choice." Self-defense. It had always been one of Eric's... _endearing qualities_. "These... _savages_, they—they seek to destroy you..." Eric looked up with these last few words, and as their eyes met, the confirmation of Eric's pain was so strong that Godric longed to drop to his knees and comfort him with physical, intimate touch, communicating the reciprocation in ways Eric could understand...

But right now the love of the father was what Eric needed most.

"I am aware of what they have planned." _And you were wrong to interfere. Foolish child. My foolish child. _My_ child..._ Godric indicated the girl's unconscious companion. Blood was drying on his left temple where Gabe had shoved him into a cabinet and he collapsed to the floor. "This one betrayed you."

"He's with the Fellowship." The girl. Her hair trembled slightly as she rubbed her arms; she shivered, glancing at the deceiver and then away again. "They set a trap for us..."

"How long has it been since you've fed?"

Godric blinked and looked back to his child. "I require very little blood anymore." _There are times when you are aware of more than you should be, and for that I commend you. But at this moment it makes you extremely imprudent. Tread lightly, my son._

An alarm began to sound inside the church, heard clearly even within the depths of the basement. Godric lifted his head, his eyes on the door; he sensed his child's and the girl's to be on the same. The sound put him in mind of an up-tempo, electronic rendition of the air-raid sirens used in London during the Great War... "Save the human." _They will have to kill me now, if only to put the minds of those they protect at ease..._

But Eric had not moved, his regard once again upon Godric's face.

"Go on." Firm, yet gentle, as Godric had most always been with his child.

And this, amidst undercurrents of desperation and fear, was met with defiance. "I am not leaving your side until you're—"

"_I can take care of myself!"_ He had not meant to scold him so harshly—Eric was, after all, only being himself... a self Godric knew better than ever his progeny could realize.

The girl stepped forward, tension, fear and sympathy etched in her posture. "Come _on_, we have to go!"

_The father must instruct._ "Spill no blood on your way out." _And the child must obey._

Eric's eyes slowly dropped, and even his usual gifts of subtlety could not hide his confusion.

"Go." He prodded gently at the child with his will over him as Maker.

Eric stood, placing a hand on the girl's arm and looking back at Godric one last time as he guided her through the basement door.

Godric stared at the body of Gabe Triggs without seeing it as he was swept back a thousand years to a time and place very different from this one... happier... and yet so much worse...

And Eric's emotions told him that he was thinking of it too.


	2. Kith, Kin, and Kind

To this day, Eric couldn't recall which of them had allowed his helmet to slip from his fingers—only that he had tripped over it, and looked a clumsy fool for the blunder. Vikings weren't supposed to stumble. They were supposed to have command over those weaker than they, over the very ground they walked on, and above all—perhaps especially in the drug-induced frenzies which aided them in battle—over their own bodies. They carried themselves—never the other way around.

_Tripped. Jesus._

He felt his arms beginning to slip from his companions' shoulders… but even so they came down with him, their weapons, armor, and shields clanking, clunking, as they met the earth. Gasping for breath, his temples throbbing, Eric pushed himself into a sitting position up against the soiled hillside. This semi-restfulness eased his aching wounds the tiniest fraction; swaddled in his bearskin cloak, the sun was warm upon his skin… and he suddenly found himself scorched by the thought of dying here. The sensation of heat was intense, consuming… He could almost feel his insides blistering…

All the blood he had left would spill from the contracting and releasing, unnatural hole within him, and for what? So that he could meet the end that his parents and sister had, their throats torn open by wolves who turned into men upon their deaths? So that, once reunited in the afterlife, he could admit his failure, his unfulfilled promise for vengeance?

Ulfrick, always wanting him to match his footprints like a child so that it might help him "learn to be a king." Astrid, ever on her husband's side, sadness in the smiles she directed at her son. Solveig, with her tiny, grasping fingers and her helpless cries that gifted her with some unnatural strength. Little Solveig…

Ten years ago.

He had been such a child then: arrogant, tactless, selfish… Eric felt his personality had improved greatly in the space of a decade, now that he had friends who understood his greatness, his complexity…

Hrolf and Gunnar were crouching at his side, panting, blood sweating down their faces, their lips peeled back from slowly rotting teeth. Their entire beings were focused upon his movements: poised, quivering, almost hound like—

And a wolf, jaundiced fangs dripping crimson—its very lips were blackened with it—was lunging for his throat—

But it was only Hrolf and Gunnar, their brows furrowed slightly as they peered at him; even so, it was an effort to let go of his breath. _"Go on."_

They had fought with him through so much… but he could not let them sit here and watch him fight for his most prized possession.

Each intake of breath crushed the spreading sunlight, and each exhale brought it surging back. All he had known was ice, and now it was melting… but it had been melting for ten years.

And so it was only fitting that he be the first of his brothers to embrace death, with drawn lips and leeward face, so that when the pair joined him, he might advise them of what was to come… Even now it shrieked in his ears, beckoning him even as it sat on his chest, enveloping him in the heavy folds of its cloak…

But then Eric realized that neither Hrolf nor Gunnar had moved from his side, and neither had death drawn him from theirs.

"_I'm finished."_ Though all had pledged that each man was to govern himself, the members of the band had constantly looked to Eric for guidance, laughing off his blunders and celebrating with his victories—so why did they refuse to listen to him now?

But Eric could never allow his confusion to show on his face, for confusion was weakness, and weakness was death. But, as he would find later that evening, Death was close at hand regardless… _"Go on."_

"_No."_ Gunnar, hair and sparse beard as flaxen as his own despite that the three of them had not bathed in some time, had never been one to skirt the fire in his speech.

"_Eric…"_ Hrolf's darker fringe swept across his brow as he clapped him on the arm, _"you saved our lives a hundred times."_

If someone had said as much to him ten years ago, Eric would have laughed at such an absurd statement and broken the man's jaw—and would have done so not necessarily in that order. But now Eric found the words more grounded in reality than he was comfortable with. To die in battle was noble, but to live and fight and kill for the gods another day was nobler still, and Eric would have condemned himself to guilt had he allowed someone to take this latter chance from his friends. And guilt was weakness, and weakness was death.

"_We won't allow you to be eaten by wolves."_

Teeth. Blood. Yellow. Red. Black.

He was a fool to have thought telling his brothers about the slaughter of his family would bring peace form such memories. And foolishness was weakness, and weakness was death.

"_We'll wait for the end by your side,"_ agreed Gunnar.

Eric looked at the bloody nuisance crouched on his chest as it peered back into his face, and allowed his friends' words to comfort him. But to desire comfort, much less accept it, was weakness, and weakness was death.

Compared to destruction at the jaws of wolves, this slip from life would be easy… and ease was weakness, and weakness was death.

"_We'll give you a hero's farewell."_

Despite his frequent, enthusiastic lectures on self-reliance, Hrolf had always idolized Eric in his storytelling… a child boasting of his brother's exploits. Eric had never enjoyed the position more. To be immortalized was almost a protection from weakness…

"_The gods wait for you in Valhalla."_

But all Eric could see reflected in Gunnar's eyes was this forest—far from whatever green drapery might be hung in Odin's hall.

And to die was to surrender, and surrender was weakness…

Hrolf grinned; Eric knew an embellishment on the subject was coming whether he cared to hear it or not. _"There will be a party… with meat… and gold… and beer…"_

Eric's mouth watered, causing the blood dried at his lips to run from them like goats attempting to run from a storm. He could almost taste the wet mix of grains upon his tongue…

"_Beer!"_ Gunnar laughed-he had enjoyed his drink perhaps the most of the three of them-and gently shoved Eric's shoulder (he winced). _"And women? Will there be women?"_

Eric thought of the serving girl he had pleasured on the day his family was slaughtered. Her seemingly demure smile had been a thin veil to ferocity and shameless need; that day she could have given the goats she cared for a lesson on how to fuck someone properly. Even her hair had shone with the same vibrancy as a vixen's coat. The day his family was slaughtered, she had led him on… and he had followed her. He had done so willingly, yes… but it was easier to blame someone else.

_Had she lived, she would have made quite the vampire._

Eric smiled at the old joke despite the stinging cuts the gesture made. _"Wherever I am… there will always be women."_

His grin broadened at his brothers' laughter: here, at last, was something agreeable.

But when they lifted him up to begin walking once again, the world went gray, and in those fragile seconds, Eric recalled the previous night's distraction, when he had received these screaming wounds…

And distraction was weakness, and weakness was death.

* * *

He couldn't remember who they had been fighting, and that was the thing about the berserker lifestyle: you were always fighting somebody, until the faces began to blur into one generic colossus, the spun gold covering its head whipping blood through the air as it wielded a mad axe. He only recalled that he, Hrolf and Gunnar had been outnumbered, as usual. Two to one? Yes, that sounded about right. Increase the odds too much and the memory would become nothing more than a story, impossible fabrication—even if he and his companions _had_ been hopped up on hallucinogens at the time—and this recollection was not one to be tampered with.

You were always fighting somebody, and you were always high.

Eric's fingers, slick with sweat and blood, tightened upon the hilt of his sword as the blade, upon meeting his adversary's spinal column, resisted for a moment—hence why decapitation was always a two-handed job—before exiting through the opposing side of the neck. Lips drawn back from his teeth, Eric barely noticed the head's meeting of the ground; he was instead focused upon how jagged, almost _lumpy_, the exposed muscle at the top of the trunk appeared.

_Swords had always been such unwieldy weapons… Even when they had been forged lighter, sharper, they had never been close to a match for his own fangs, his own impressive speed and strength… but even he was so very weak in comparison to his Maker, whom he on a number of occasions had watched break swords into pieces with his fingers as a human might crumble twigs._

Eric didn't bother watching the blood spitting from the trachea as the body, having just wheezed its last, crumpled upon itself; even though the red liquid had appeared almost luminescent in his drug-induced state, seconds had already passed and a new body was screeching to be skewered upon his sword.

But Gunnar reached this one before him, impaling it almost casually before grinning back at Eric as it fell. _"Looks like Hrolf will have a new hero to boast about if you keep that pace up!"_

"_You have a lot of catching up to do before you are granted the privilege to lick my boots!"_

Laughing, Gunnar passed him by—and that was when Eric saw the fox.

Crouched low to the ground at the edge of the clearing, it matched Eric's stare without fear. The tips of blackened ears gave way to a russet pelt that glowed and flickered in the firelight… nevertheless, its yellowed teeth—so _sharp—_shone in high relief as it grinned at him.

Death.

It was impossible for Eric to be afraid of it, and yet…

Even at this distance, he could feel its fur beneath his fingers.

But then its eyes widened—a definite warning, as Eric would learn later—and the berserker turned—

—and met the new victim's heart with his blade.

It was the immediate follow-up that Eric hadn't been ready for.

_At least he didn't have to see the man's face in his daymares._

* * *

The hooting of an owl brought Eric back to the wooden funeral pyre beneath him, and it was with this re-awareness, strangely enough, that Eric realized that the fox he had seen the previous night had had gray eyes…

And foxes' eyes were yellow.

Realizing he had been holding his breath, Eric released it—and winced. The last dose of hallucinogens, which Hrolf and Gunnar had given him to ease his last day's journey, had worn off some time ago, and with it, his invincibility. To Eric's humiliation, the pain in his stomach had increased tenfold. Pain was weakness, and weakness was death.

His mother's scrams rang in his ears…

He was a fool for abandoning his family when they needed him most, for returning too late to save them…

And laggard fools were weak…

_No._

Eric watched Gunnar approach him and lean his crossed forearms upon the pyre. The scent of roasted hare still clung to his breath; Eric swallowed, fighting back a grimace. (The pain had been so strong that his body, much to his disappointment, had almost immediately rejected what his companions had fed to him.)

Gunnar smiled; if the gesture was meant to be reassuring, it was _really_ working wonders… _"All will be well. Don't be afraid."_

It almost saddened Eric that, despite how much he _loved_ the idea of needing comfort, one of the first true friends he had ever had could never hope to match Godric in how much of it his words brought… but such emotions were weakness, and weakness was death.

"_I'm not afraid."_ It was a mark of how much weakness was overtaking him that he didn't even have the strength to make puns anymore. Withdrawal was closing over his near-corpse, pounding his temples, constricting his breath… and the heat in his belly remained. _"I'm pissed off."_

Gunnar chuckled softly, and Eric wondered whether he and Hrolf would carry on his task of vengeance, were he to ask them…

The air snapped, and as Hrolf spun toward the echo, Eric felt his stomach tighten, felt gooseflesh rise on his skin, beneath his tunic.

And Eric was enraged now more than ever that the chain mail (_fucking useless lump of shit that turned out to be_) had been removed by his companions before they laid him on the pyre: their effort to make him more comfortable only made a clear line between life and death for him to cross. No struggle. No chance to cling to this existence…

Hrolf drew his sword. _"Who's there?"_

Gunnar turned as he in turn freed the axe from his belt.

What memory he had of the physical pain of that night was nothing compared to this.

"_Show yourself!"_ Hrolf's last words were so different from Gunnar's, and yet the designated effect was so similar…

How Eric longed to erase the next few seconds from his memory… but the mind was a cruel bitch.

The fire flashed twice, as if something had blocked it and gone away again at a pace much faster than anything human… The choked gurgling of his brothers' throats being slit was so clear upon his ears… he thought he could still hear the spray of their blood…

And then the shadow was crouching over him; Eric watched the gray eyes beneath the dark tangled locks search his face, watched the shadow watch him die…

Gray eyes…

The fire's glow swept over the face of not a fox but a child, his cheekbones strong yet almost effeminate in their lack of beard. In averting his eyes from the dark liquid dripping from the boy's chin, they lit instead upon the decorated chain inked upon his collarbones… Bondage.

The goblin had leapt from his sight some time ago, but Eric could still feel it pressing down on him… perhaps it had become invisible at the sight of Thor's hammer, winking in the firelight as it swung gently from the boy's neck? _"Are you Death?"_

The answering smile as the child nodded set the back of Eric's neck to prickling… When he spoke, twin fangs were visible. _"I am."_

His voice was so soft, almost gentle… which only served to increase Eric's gratitude that the child's fangs appeared so sharp. Orange flame lit again upon the dark locks, the smooth cheeks, the curiosity… _"But you're just a little boy."_

The smile broadened, the eyes crinkling almost with pride…

_Thank the gods he had been amused._

"_I'm not."_

And Eric suddenly felt very young, and very foolish… not knowing that he would have this feeling more often than he would prefer in the coming centuries. But if this being who held the appearance of a youth approaching manhood was not a boy, then what was he? The lack of ability to answer such a question on his own was weakness… and now here he was, Death crouching at his side. Ironically enough, Eric now sought distraction… His eyes flickered to a pair of dark shapes, unnaturally sprawled upon the earth. _"My men…"_

"_Dead."_

The softness of the child's voice was almost a mockery of the term. _"You swine."_

Half of the boy's mouth curved upward, almost as if in consideration… _"I watched you on the battlefield last night."_

The confirmation was by now a means of relief—might have brought about his very demise, for all it was.

The child shook his head, and there finally appeared something Eric was usually comfortable with: admiration. _"I never saw anyone fight like you."_

"_I would fight you now if I could."_

Laughter, soft as the voice, threw the boy's fangs into sharp relief. _"I know."_ His eyes glinted as he lifted his chin, still smiling as he appraised Eric with certainty. _"It's beautiful."_

There was no denying that, even if Eric had wanted to. _"What are you waiting for? Kill me."_

The boy shifted slightly, and Eric tensed; he had offered for the child to kill him, but he was going to bring the boy with him. And then he drew breath… hesitated… spoke. _"Could you be a companion of Death? Could you walk with me through the world… through the dark? I'll teach you all I know. I'll be your father, your brother, your child."_

It was a weighted offer, to have to follow the direction of a child, particularly of an ex-slave… But with speed such as the boy possessed, Eric would make an invincible warrior… until he died within the hour. Surely this boy, if he was more than he appeared to be, had seen such a flaw? _"What's in it for me?"_

That smile again; Eric would come to rejoice in it, but now it seemed almost degrading, as if the answer which the child was about to give him were obvious. But Eric would learn that it hadn't been degrading at all… _"What you love most: Life."_

Anything to escape weakness… _"Life…"_

Such a wide smile… and then the child had fallen upon him with horrifying speed and sank his fangs into Eric's neck.

The pain had been unlike anything he'd ever experienced… but the mind is merciful in that it cannot provide exact recall of agony, merely the fact that it existed, and so Eric only remembered his own screams… and the press of the boy's cool wrist against his own, which Eric had focused his thoughts upon in an effort to distract himself from the wet sucking at his throat… A small comfort, this distraction, but necessary nonetheless.

And requiring comfort was weakness, and weakness was death.

But.


	3. The Thousand Deaths

"_Brothers and sisters, we are on lockdown..."_

Eric ascended the stairs, and the mechanical voice of the lunatic who had attempted to orchestrate his Maker's demise was a funeral march in comparison to his own aggressive stride. Aggressive, even in the face of a thousand memories, a thousand triumphs, a thousand fears... Aggressive, even in the face of his Maker's will: _"Spill no blood on your way out."_

Spill no blood? That was like trying to tell a cat it wasn't allowed to catch mice. Rebellion, and spilling blood, were part of both their natures—part of _Godric's_ nature. If he hadn't freed himself two thousand years ago, he wouldn't be Eric's Maker today, and the thought of living a human life without the ageless boy, or even an undead life under a different vampire, made the Viking's jaw clench. What was Godric thinking? Had those sycophantic assholes begun to threaten his own life unless Godric called him off? It was the only explanation Eric could think of. They had nearly sacrificed their lives for one another many times over the centuries, and the berserker had no doubt that Godric, like Hrolf and Gunnar, would die for him in an instant. But he and his Maker would find a way to kill them all—they always had. No one attempted to end Godric and got away with their lives.

To end Godric...

Eric relaxed his jaw immediately on remembering its tension. To betray anything but confident strategy was weakness, and weakness was death. To say that he or Godric were weak was also death.

The Viking had felt many aspects of Death—_Father, brother, son—_but none resembled the one whose instruction he was now working to obey. The Death he knew would have rejoiced at bloodshed, ancient eyes gleaming with pride as the crimson fluid dripped down their chins. The Death he knew would have offered a layered smile and pressed his bloodied lips to Eric's forehead, answering his triumphant snarl with a quiet growl. The Death he knew would never have allowed himself to be captured in the first place.

_There is no right or wrong. Only survival... or death._

And now it seemed Death's very survival was being fought for.

The Viking pressed his back against a wall, assured that the rednecks closing the double doors around the corner would not be alerted to his presence until he was ready for them to know. There were only three of them; hardly a fair fight. Eric was almost disappointed. It would have been a challenge to escape without spilling a drop of lunch, and Eric loved a challenge. "I could have you out in seconds."

"There's kids out there!" Sookie's voice was quiet—she wasn't stupid—but the horror in it was unmistakable, not to mention irrational. When you lived as long as he had, children were amusement, children were _dessert_, but they weren't worth fretting over. They were just miniature humans. The only child worth being concerned about, especially because he was so much more than that, was Godric.

The berserker forced himself to explain his view in a way that was still rational, in a way that wouldn't encourage one of her pathetic debates. (Watching her try to get in his face, back in his office in Fangtasia, feeling her slap him, had been as comical as it had been arousing. He had hoped that tucking her into his back pocket to keep Lafayette company would prove to be even more entertaining in the future.) "Well, those humans wouldn't think twice about hurting us."

Thankfully, she couldn't argue with that. "Why didn't you bring Bill with you?"

Working to ensure his facial expression never changed, Eric forced down a laugh, even though Sookie couldn't see it. Bill? Bill would have been about as useful as a hay bale in this situation. "Bill's attachment to you is irrational. It clouds his judgment... He would kill every child in this church to save you." _Not to mention the fact that his abilities as a vampire are so weak that they would capture him in about a second._

"Why aren't you?"

Eric stared at her. Was she joking? No, no, he could see that she wasn't. But how could she possibly think he would kill anyone—especially the children she had just been terrified to see harmed—for _her?_ She was attractive, yes, but she was merely human. If he killed anyone tonight, it would be for Godric, and Godric alone. "I'm following Godric's orders and getting you out, that's all."

She watched his face. "He's your Maker, isn't he?"

"_I'll be your father, your brother, your son."_ They had exchanged these roles and more, not only to fit in with their food, but to amuse themselves, or aid in the teaching of a lesson... or, in Eric's case more often than not, as part of his seduction of his vampiric other third. (He and Pam had no need to use such terms: a glance, a flick of her hair with his fingers, and a shared smirk all seemed to be enough for her.) The words meant more to the Viking than he would ever care to admit, even to Godric, and the thought of never again watching them shiver from the eternal boy's lips made something deep in his core shrivel painfully. "Don't use words you don't understand."

"You have a lot of love for him."

Eric could only stare at her. "... Don't use words I don't understand."

He turned back toward his prey, a plan engraved in his strategic mind, intending to step out and conceal himself among their warm breath and thundering, delicious heartbeats—"Eric, no!"—but Sookie's protest made him pause. If she rushed out in an attempt to save him, her blood would be a literal presence on his hands—and he was in no mood to deal with politics tonight.

But no one was there to say stopping her couldn't be fun.

He didn't need the ability to glamour humans, even if she hadn't been immune to that ability, to put her into a subservient stupor. He moved toward her slowly, conscious of every ripple of muscle in his body and making her conscious of it too. The Viking stalked her with the merciless seduction of a beast obsessed that his female was in heat. He backed Sookie into a corner, towering over her, smirking inside because she could not tear her eyes from his. He lowered his head—he did not need to inhale to capture her unique, powerful scent—and resisted the impulse to let his mouth touch her hair. "Trust me," he murmured, his lip nearly curling as he watched her eyes lower in aroused concurrence.

Brief interlude successful, Eric turned and, shoulders hunched, lurched toward the humans on the other side of the next room. "Well, _hey_, y'all! How's it goin'?" Behind the grin creasing his eyelids_—"I wish I could have watched the sun cross the sky for as many years as you did_,_"_ Godric said quietly, wistfulness shining in his gray eyes as he touched the crow's feet on Eric's face—he forced down a laugh. Pam might have actually vomited blood if she ever heard him speak this way with any seriousness. At least her accent was tolerable—Bill's, on the other hand, was definitely worth mocking here. "Steve sent me over to... _mind_ the exit area." The grown children stared at him, and his grin was as much a part of his disguise as it was his private amusement. It was funny, how their weapons just rested slack at their sides, as if they had never seen a human being without a tan before. "Think I can take it from here..."

"By yourself?" asked a balding man with a goatee, and Eric felt like applauding the question. They would attack him now, which would give him justification to defend himself, and surely Godric, whatever might be going through his head right now, couldn't possibly disapprove of that.

"Uh, yeah," Eric replied, as if he were any other human who had agreed to Newlin's request because he was bored and had no idea of the danger the post would put him in.

The man with the goatee nodded at Eric. "Well, you're big'n all—" _Why yes, I am, and in ways that would _terrify_ you, you close-minded pissant_ "—but there's a _vamper_ on the loose."

The Viking's eyes widened, allowing his confident, carefree smile to drop from his face as though he had just learned the tail-gating party he had been looking forward to all week had been cancelled. "Oh."

"Where's your stake?" a second member of the party asked suddenly.

A sheepish grin pulled the Viking's lips back from his teeth. "Aw, dang..." His snort of laughter was not entirely playacting. He was verging much closer toward the theatrical than he needed to be, but he just couldn't resist. "... I forgot."

Yes, Pam would definitely be vomiting by now. And then Ginger, who had always sounded like she'd had one cigarette more than her throat could stand, would add her chorus of extraordinarily shrill, hoarse screaming... Home sweet home.

Eric faked sheepish laughter once again. "Maybe I could borrow yours, if—if that's okay?" The goatee'd instigator was moving around behind him, raising his stake in deliberate increments, a fraction of a hair by a fraction of a hair.

"I can't do that." The kid was clearly overreacting. Eric hadn't just asked the kid to cut out his own heart and feed it to himself, but his tone of voice implied that he had. "Get your own!"

Eric was abruptly tired of playing human. Godric was in danger, they both were hungry, and he didn't have time for this. His facial muscles relaxed, became calm, soothing. Emptying his mind took some difficulty—every pore in his body cried out for the presence and security of his Maker—but he was certainly strong enough to manage it. In his mind's eye, tendrils the ghostly white of death extended from his lack of thought to the boy's active resistance, wrapping themselves tightly around it, before slowly drawing the catch in to his own thoughts. When Godric had first taught him how to hypnotize people, he'd mentioned that imagining the process like this would help to make it come true, and Eric had adhered to the counsel ever since. The heat of the youth's defiance cooled rapidly, and his musings became cold and sluggish, like a pint of blood that had been shoved in the refrigerator so it might keep longer.

All of this happened in under a second. "I'd very much," finished Eric, ever the polite murderer, "like to borrow your stake."

The boy's face imitated his, but poorly, so that he looked more moronic than serene. "Yeah... Yeah. That'd be okay, I guess." He held the weapon out to Eric with the slow lack of hesitation common in the successfully glamoured.

Eric shifted as if to take it, timing the gesture perfectly with the man lifting the identical stick of wood he was planning on stabbing into his back.

"_Stake!"_ Sookie's panicked cry was highly unnecessary—the Viking was already moving.

He ripped the twig from the man with the goatee at a speed Godric had reached a thousand years ago, pushing the human in the chest and sending his back into the concrete some ten feet away. He casually tossed aside the second human and lifted the third by the throat, slamming him against the wall and poising his own stake at his throat. The kid's eyes were wide as Eric, brow lowered, stared into them. The Viking was not truly angry, merely in battle mentality now—_There is no right or wrong, only survival—_and a berserker could not look anything but ferocious.

But wait, yes, the old heat _was_ rising up to greet him with open arms. This boy could have helped capture Godric. Even if he hadn't, he was associated with the people who had, which made him deserving of death. Eric had been too absorbed in goofing off earlier to realize this—and that was weak.

The patter of Sookie's heels on the floor as she ran to them only served to increase this welcome irritation. "Eric, you don't have to kill him!" She said this as though she was _excited_ about the fact that she had just realized sparing the kid might prove beneficial to them. (She was probably just trying to reinforce Godric's words, and if so, her attempts were laughable and blackballed.)

Humans really could use lessons in dictation. But in that moment the berserker was less than unwilling to give them.

He stared at the boy a moment longer before throwing the stake to the ground with a clatter and allowing the shaking child to slide to the floor after it. "Come on," he said to the telepathic waitress as he turned to open the door—

And was faced with the sight of a sweating cloud of men in gray approaching the church.

Soldiers of the Sun. He had laughed when he first heard of the moniker. The sun was powerful, there was no denying that, but the word _soldier_ conjured up very different images for Eric: bear skins, a _Schutzstaffel_ uniform, a funeral pyre, a laughing little boy with fangs sharper than swords...

"Those arrows're wood." Eric didn't feel the need to glance at the human whose companions were now leaving him behind with the scary monster from out of the closet. Strangely, there was no malign intent in the kid's voice; he only seemed relieved to be alive. "You'll never make it through..."

"Eric," Sookie again, always ready to help, "through the sanctuary!"

The Viking banged the double doors open, resisting the urge to run at speeds much faster than she ever could, but she still moved in a kind of half-trot to keep up with him. He needed to get her out as quickly as possible so he could return to help Godric. He swept past rows of pews stacked with blankets and sleeping bags without really seeing them. "Where's the exit?"

"Back that way." She gestured to the right of the altar.

"There are several _exits_, actually." Steve Newlin's white suit practically glowed with his sneer as he appeared, walking around to the front of the sacrificial table. Eric's blood surged. He quelled the impulse to rip the man limb from limb right at that instant. Once Godric was safe, Newlin would be the first to die, and he would die gradually. "For you, the easiest one takes you straight to hell."

Eric counted the Soldiers as they flooded through the entrances to the sanctuary. It would be impossible to get away from them all without spilling blood, and heat flared through him anew. Why was Godric so concerned about the people who had held him captive, the people who had probably tortured him for their own amusement? What was Godric _thinking?_

He searched through the bond... and was promptly lost in a deep, black nothingness. Eric's stomach lurched. Even when Godric was calm, Eric was calm too. He could _feel_ that, slowly coursing through his veins like a healing touch. But right now he didn't feel anything. He was completely numb. Perhaps Godric was glamouring a human on his way out of the church? But a lack of feeling had never accompanied the action before. And the connection between them told him that his Maker was still standing in the basement right where he'd left him. _WHY?_ What was _wrong_ with him? Why wasn't he tearing the so-called warriors to pieces where they stood? Eric wanted to punch something.

"Let us leave!" The girl's shout brought him back from his musings like the breaking of a rubber band. She was looking around at the men frantically. "Save yourselves! _No one_ has to die!"

_Too late for that, sweetheart._

"The war has begun, you evil whore of Satan!" As much as Eric didn't like Bill, he still thought that was going a bit far. If such a Dark Lord really existed, it had to be more powerful Bill-fucking-Compton. "You vampires cast the first stone by killin' my family. The lines have been drawn. You're either with us, or against us. We _are prepared_ for Armageddon."

"The vampire you're holdin' prisoner got away." The desperation in Sookie's voice was almost painful. _Never show an enemy that you are afraid._ It was a very old lesson, one that had passed from Godric to Eric, and Eric to Pam. "He's a Sheriff—he's _bound_ to send for help!"

"I'm not concerned with Godric!" The sound of his Maker's name on Newlin's lips, distorted by primitive hatred and the hint of a Southern accent, was almost repulsive. "Any vampire will do for our grand celebration—and we got one right here!" He gestured to Eric.

Of course. It was the only way.

Sookie was staring at him. Eric returned her gaze. He would find a way to escape, but if Godric didn't reach safety... "I'll be fine," he said at last.

He hoped she would get out when she had the chance. Dying now would be such a waste of her... _ability_.

Newlin was still grinning when Eric stepped forward, head bowed, preparing himself for the pain to come. He reached through the bond one last time...

The Viking had known a thousand aspects of Death, but in each of them he had felt _something._ Godric, at his age, would certainly be able to hear his progeny's footsteps as he gave himself up for roasting—and yet Eric hadn't received even the tiniest sliver of concern from him. It wasn't as if Godric didn't care about him anymore; the surge he had felt when the ageless boy summoned him to the basement was solid proof that he did. Then why—

Eric swallowed. Was Godric...? No, _no—_if Godric was truly dead, was murdered against all odds by these stinking blood bags, he was certain he would have felt it. He would have _FELT_ IT, GOD DAMN IT!

He still wasn't receiving any emotions from the immortal child... and he might never find out why.

_Godric... Please._

"Brothers and sisters, there _will be_ a holy bonfire at dawn!"


	4. The Technicolor Window

Godric forced himself abruptly out of his reverie. Recalling the flavor of Eric's human blood—roasted hare and a sweet desire for life like the warmth of the sun—would not ease his despicable hunger. (Starving to death would also not have generated as much of an impact on the supernatural and natural communities as meeting the sun would, but the cursed boy felt it was a good start.)

As time passed, Godric wondered in his now-distant way why no one was coming to check on him. Surely, with the desires for destruction he could feel raging through Eric's blood like a forest alight, someone would want to ensure he had not escaped? One of the Soldiers _must_ come eventually, and then Godric would ask for death, because he had caused the humans further pain by his own progeny's unwanted involvement.

"_I... I offer myself... in exchange for Godric's freedom..."_

The irredeemable child could hear everything going on in the church... particularly in the sanctuary. He had never been inside that room, had never even seen it or bothered to trace human voices to determine its location. He would find out when he was brought up from this place to die, or he would not find out at all; he could care less.

But ever since he had called Eric down here, he had been aware of the Viking in ways that had almost not existed for the last sixty years or so. Eric would always be in his blood, but these effects had been diluted, first by self-loathing and pity, and then, beginning after the apparent failure of the Great Revelation, by a general lack of awareness of the world around him. The press of the sun upon his body when daylight approached had become his only clue in discerning when another night had passed in whirling anonymity. His skill in masking these changes had only decreased as the months went by and society remained stubbornly ignorant to the possibility of coexistence.

Eric had seen this decline on his face, and because of it he was now restrained by silver. The burning sensations on Godric's wrists, ankles, and across his neck were very faint, but they were there. The Viking's emotions cried out to the boy: deadened echoes of rage, confusion, and anguish that had begun to rebound off stone many miles away. He could hear his groans of agony, feel his own lungs expand with the Viking's gasping breaths, smell his charring flesh... But the listless boy did not possess the will to do anything about them. He knew he should, _wanted_ to have the will to aid his offspring, but he did not.

This was far from the first time Eric had survived silver's brazen tongue...

* * *

The Viking had been _his_ for just over a month, and his hunger was still insatiable. They had progressed from Godric bringing Eric food, to Eric accompanying Godric on hunts without interference, and now to Eric making his very own kills.

The new Maker felt himself stand a little straighter than he had in a very long time as he watched Eric feed. The berserker had resisted at first, naturally, but had become quite well-adapted to requiring human blood for nourishment—as long as the one from which he fed attacked him first. The fortunate boy received these emotions through their bond—their astounding, pure, _beautiful_ bond—and gave a fanged grin as his son opened the gray-bearded man's throat wider, shredding muscle and tendon carelessly in an effort to receive more of the life-giving liquid of which he could never get enough. He could almost feel the blood coursing down his own throat, but he had fed previously, and his hunger was but an echo of Eric's now.

Teaching the Viking to be more careful with his victims was a lesson Godric delayed each time he witnessed this glorious experience.

At last, the berserker gave a contented groan and allowed the body to crumple unceremoniously to the ground. He stared down at the corpse, blinking, still overwhelmed by the high of feeding. _"That... was good,"_ he admitted, and Godric's blood pulsed in his most sensitive areas like the memory of a heartbeat.

"_I'm glad you think so."_ The tender smile was still in place as Godric approached the berserker, stretched up on his toes, and reached up to curve a small palm around the side of Eric's neck. A gentle press of his fingers, and Eric bowed his head without a word of protest—he had finally learned to stop resisting _that_, at least. The fastidious boy licked Eric's neck and the lower half of his face, determined to remove every droplet of crimson sweetness and make the Viking's skin once more shine with the light of the moon. _"You learn much faster than I had initially expected, and I am proud of you."_ He squirmed slightly whenever some other part of Eric's body—his hair, his thigh—came in contact with his own, and when he was finished he immediately took a step back so as not to tempt himself to initiate something even as apparently simple as a kiss.

"_Of _course_ I learn quickly—I'm not an idiot,"_ Eric scowled. His expression smoothed out as he licked the remaining traces of blood from his lips and teeth.

"_I know,"_ Godric soothed. His fists clenched at his sides as his blood began to throb with greater force. _"I only meant that I am impressed at how well you have thus far adapted to the demands of this life—and to prove this, I will allow you to do something very special for me."_

Eric gazed down at Godric, and Godric gazed up at Eric. There was a weighted pause, and the quiet anticipation in that moment was beautiful. _"What is it?"_ The Viking inquired at last, and the caution in his voice was not unexpected.

Godric smiled. He couldn't wait for the night when Eric would look back on this moment and cherish it as much as he already was. _"I want you to kill this man's wife."_

"_No."_ Eric's reply was immediate as his brow lowered. _"I have no quarrel with her."_

"_You drained _his_ life eagerly enough,"_ Godric gestured to the corpse at their feet._ "His bedmate will soon begin searching for him, and when she does you will kill her."_

"_No. His life was taken because he was a warrior; he could have harmed me, given a more durable axe. She would be less than a match against me."_ He leaned forward slightly, towering over the boy, as he said it again, _"No."_

Godric stared hard into his Viking's glare—he was dissatisfied, not with Eric but with himself and his inability to patiently wait for the epiphany that was sure to come to his child, showing the northerner just how enjoyable this new life would be if they worked for each other's happiness together—and replied with finality, _"As your Maker, I command you."_

The berserker's frustration was like a hot coal burning in Godric's throat as he led his child back through the woods to the little cottage by the stream. But Eric needed to begin seeing the world through his eyes or the both of them would only continue to suffer..

They crouched under the low branches of an old spruce, and soon enough a woman with aged features appeared at the door, smiling slightly, carrying a head scarf with frayed edges and a pair of scissors in her arms. _"Egil?"_ she called, peering into the dark. _"Egil, darling, never mind about the water. Come inside; it's freezing."_

Godric shifted lower, nearly onto his belly, his lips peeling back from his fangs. The hairs of Eric's arm brushed his, and the accompanying surge was almost gratifying. They were one predator now. Not two, as they had been for so long, but one.

"_Egil?"_ Her forehead had wrinkled; her voice had risen slightly as she took a few cautious steps outside of her home. _"Egil, where are you?"_

"_Now,"_ Godric breathed, and Eric sped to the woman—he was not a blur to Godric, he moved far too slowly for that, but he would be to her, oh yes—and caught her by the throat.

Her eyes widened as she gave a muted, unintelligible cry and drove the blades of the scissors up into the Viking's bicep.

Eric's responding roar made the hairs on the back of Godric's neck stand up even as he rushed to pull her away from him. She cried out as he broke her fingers in the process of bringing her arms behind her back. The boy did not regret the... _accident_. His eyes were only on Eric as the Viking pulled the improvised weapon from his smoking flesh and dropped it with a hiss as the fingers that had been holding it also began to smolder.

He watched his child heal with bated breath, surprised to feel a terrible ache in his own arm, but lifted his chin when the berserker glared at him. _"Eric. Drink."_

The woman screamed and began struggling anew. Godric yanked her upright when she slipped on the tunic that had fallen to the ground between herself and her soon-to-be killer, and the motion evidently startled her into unmoving silence.

"_Why?"_ Eric snarled. _"She was _defending herself_ from me because _you_ told me to attack her!"_

"_I _ordered_ you to _kill_ her, and because you hesitated, you were injured,"_ Godric returned the growl. He closed his eyes for a moment, drew in a slow breath as he collected himself—he would not, _must_ not be short with Eric—and caught the Viking's gaze. _"Whatever you believed in your human life, now you must realize the two extremes in this one. There is no right or wrong—only survival, or death. And this—"_ he gave her a little shake _"—this right here, is survival."_

"_I would rather die."_

Godric stared, though his hardened expression never changed. What was the point in dying for someone whose life was so fragile, so fleeting? For someone Eric didn't even know? _She_ wasn't the one who had fed, clothed and protected Eric these past few weeks—Eric's very survival didn't depend on _her_.

Another long moment passed before the unenlightened boy said again, _"I believe I told you to drink,"_ and slammed his will down on the ignorant child without mercy.

Gritting his teeth, the berserker came forward, and Godric watched the blood run down over the Viking's lower lip as his fangs cut into his flesh. The ageless boy could smell the scarlet liquid, and its scent was more delicious than that of any human blood. Eric paused, eyes locking with the woman's, and his teacher's will constricted around him. _"I forbid you to hypnotize her."_

Following yet another age of silence and piercing glares, Eric slowly lowered his head until his mouth was by the widow's ear, and she began to whimper. _"I'm sorry,"_ he said softly, and Godric's mouth opened in a very sharp grin as he felt the pressure around his child disappear. The Viking blinked, evidently surprised to find the weight gone, and then returned Godric's smile as the victorious boy felt warmth spread through both their beings. Eric's grin widened—

And Godric's head snapped back as he uttered a cry almost of ecstasy, as though Eric had sunk his fangs into his Maker's chest instead of hers.

* * *

"_STEVE NEWLIN!"_ Stan's announcement derailed the imprisoned boy's metaphorical train of thought, and for this he was grateful. _"You've pushed us too far..."_

Of course Stan would come looking for him. Godric was more than aware that the... _cowboy_ coveted his political position, but had an obligation to find him regardless. And his lieutenant, like Eric, had long believed in achieving justice personally.

The boy had not viewed that woman's death as justice, merely as a tool to be used in his instruction, but that did not now make it any less contemptible.

Under the echoes of his insubordinate's voice, Eric's animosity had only increased. When he had chosen Stan to be his deputy and Isabel's counterpoint, though as far as the boy was aware the two had never met, Godric had known Eric would not approve of his choice. They were much too similar—bullets ricocheting off one another and those around them without padding to absorb the blows—and their arrogance and stubbornness would never allow them to feel at ease in the same room.

But Eric had been consumed by the crashing waves of bloodlust before Stan made his appearance. There was only one other being in this church Godric knew whom his progeny would wish to annihilate: Steven Newlin himself.

"_Destroy them."_ Stan's drawling growl, so different from Eric's lilting native tongue, pierced the boy like the sharpest silver caltrops. _"_All_ of them."_

As much as Godric was disappointed by Newlin's methods of militant peace, and perhaps because of them, he could not allow violence in what was meant to be a place of serenity.

He could not bear witness to more bloodshed. Not before he achieved the True Death. He _would_ not.

Godric raced up through the church, his awareness of the hallways he was twisting through just enough to keep him from colliding with their borders, until he stood on the balustrade overlooking the sanctuary.

"ENOUGH!" Godric had had an almost ridiculous amount of time to observe the way echoes were spread off an endless variety of materials. He only needed to raise his voice the tiniest fraction to employ them.

They all turned to look at him: Stan and other vampires he vaguely recognized as belonging to his Area, fangs extended, leaning over the humans in their grasps as if preparing to drain them. The girl, clinging to a vampire he could not identify. Newlin, half-sitting, half-lying on the steps leading to the altar. Eric, standing next to Newlin, awaiting further instruction from his Maker.

To call attention to himself like this, just a few years ago, would have made Godric's skin crawl. But his flesh wasn't that sensitive anymore, and in this moment he could not even experience the relief he might have normally received from that.

The boy's gaze was drawn to the stained glass at the front of the church. The translucent material glowed slightly: the yellow of candlelight piercing the blue-black of night. A very small, far-away part of him wondered if the lancet window would bleed at dawn...

Godric never wanted to see the color red again.

"You came for me, I assume." His eyes once again roamed the creatures of light and darkness spread out below him before alighting on his lieutenant. "Underling?"

Stan had turned his face back to the man in his grasp as though preparing to strike, although his eyes lifted at Godric's emphasis on his low rank. "Yes, Sheriff?"

"These people have not harmed me. You see? We _can_ coexist." The confusion roaring beneath Eric's surface nearly drowned out the memories of debating with Stan on the sensibility of attempting to live peacefully alongside human beings.

It had been apparent from the beginning that the misled pastor's views were the opposite. "Mr. Newlin?" Eric turned his shoulders to regard the man in question—_"Movement draws the eye,"_ Godric breathed the reminder to his young one as they hid in the brush, their prey but within spitting distance—and there was wistfulness and death in his expression and in the bond. The boy waited until the preacher looked up at him before continuing, "I do not wish to create bloodshed when none is called for." Stan stared down at the neck of the man he held, and Godric could clearly see him lick his lips. "Help me set an example. If we leave you in peace, will you do the same?"

Newlin's reply was immediate and had been nearly preconstructed in the boy's mind word-for-word. "I will _not_ negotiate with sub-humans." He rose to his knees and turned toward Eric, loosening his collar and holding the fabric away from his throat. Eric's longing increased. "Kill me. Do it." He looked at Godric before closing his eyes almost triumphantly. "Jesus will protect me."

The ageless boy sighed inwardly. He had derived from observation that the preacher would never support the idea of coexistence, and his words now did nothing to realign that knowledge. "I am actually older than your Jesus." Newlin's eyes snapped open, his face slackening. "I wish I could have known him, but I missed it."

Godric did wish it—to meet any model of tranquility, anyone who believed accordance was possible—but by the time he heard of such a person's existence he or she was often long dead.

Struck by an idea, the boy raced down into the sanctuary and snagged his fingers in the back of Newlin's collar, dragging him backward up the steps and stopping before he met the altar. "Good people, who of you is willing to die for this man's madness?" He could feel the man shaking as he stood with his back bowed under the ageless boy's grip.

Godric looked around at the humans as they looked around at each other. Their eyes were wide; they too were shaking. None stepped forward or made another indication that they wished to relinquish their lives for this repulsive creature. "That's what I thought." His eyes flickered briefly to the vampires of his Area. "Stand down, everyone."

Stan's growled, eyes heavenward, and practically shoved away the human in his grasp. None of his followers appeared as nearly exasperated.

"People," Godric finished, "go home. It's over now."

"Oh, thank God, Bill!" He dimly heard the vampire holding the girl murmur soothingly.

Stan glowered at the departing humans as the air above Godric's shoulders began to feel a little lighter. No one had been hurt; everyone was safe.

But the immortal boy had hurt far too many people—this one act of kindness would hardly make up for centuries of cruelty. He had realized a while ago that he did not belong in this world, and so the quicker he left it, the better. Wasting time running around and trying to make an impression that would fix everything was foolish; he really didn't have the right to try to change everyone's minds. He would end himself soon, and this time he would do it in secret.

Godric had hurt many people, but he had never wanted to hurt Eric. And his final death _would_ hurt Eric, he knew that, and in some of the deepest ways possible. But Godric had begun dying months ago, and whatever his Viking might attempt, even their combined forces could do nothing to hinder the slow spread of decay. His eyes flickered to his child, to the blue sea gazing back at him, and wanted to feel sorry for him because he would be alone in his endeavor to cure Godric of this darkest of despairs.

"Please... don't leave me!"

A memory of a scowl twisted Godric's lips as he shoved Newlin to the ground far more gently than Eric would say he should have, revealing to him the point he had just proved: "I _daresay_ my faith in humankind is stronger than yours!" Newlin panted for breath as though the boy's hold on his collar had been choking him, and Godric did not have the energy nor the will to feel apologetic.

"Come," said the Sheriff of Area Nine to those under his jurisdiction, and began the long walk to the double doors in the back of the room—but Stan deliberately blocked his path.

"Sir," a disbelieving smile had begun to creep up his face, "after what these humans have done to you—"

"I said ʻcomeʼ," the boy interrupted calmly, returning the gaze of but one of many who had disobeyed him. Decades earlier he might have destroyed the Texan for his rebellion. Godric saw now that would not have solved anything, and he still required Stan's services. He was too tired to search for a replacement; unwilling to give rise for cause for one.

His lieutenant stepped aside, head bowed slightly—out of chastisement or mockery Godric did not have the strength to determine—and the ageless boy led the way out of the sanctuary. Not thirty seconds later a second shadow flanked his opposing shoulder.

"Sookie Stackhouse came here of her own free will with Isabel's human in an attempt to find out whether you had been kidnapped." Eric's voice was quiet at his side; out of the corner of his eye Godric saw Stan glance at the Viking, brow furrowing briefly, before rolling his eyes and looking away again. "Bill Compton is under my jurisdiction, and as she is his it is my duty to protect them both while we are here."

Godric nodded; he knew the level of responsibility required of him as Sheriff of this Area more than he sometimes would like. "My nest will be the safest place for them, at least for tonight." He blinked, struggling to capture a memory darting around, tickling the back of his mind. "When I was in the basement, I heard Mr. Newlin speaking to someone with her family name..." What was it?

"White-suited motherfucker..."

Godric paused, turned at the vaguely familiar voice; Eric and Stan turned also. It was almost like having two Erics for his children, a small part of him mused, with the way they both copied his actions immediately and without thought... The ageless boy knew which one he preferred.

The girl—he had a name for her now, _Sookie_, which saddened him the tiniest bit because he knew he was likely to forget it, the same way he had forgotten thousands of names and faces over the centuries—was leading the vampire, Bill Compton, towards them. He was restraining a young man with hair as fair as hers, and in his tanned features Godric could see a resemblance to the girl—her cousin? Perhaps. "Jason," she was saying, "you can't just go throwin' stuff at a guy like that, no matter how nasty and mean he is. He's on _TV_! You could get in all sorts of trouble for that!"

"She's right," Eric agreed as the six of them went out into the... _parking lot_, "which is why we'll be staying with Godric until this blows over." The Viking had not allowed a trace of eagerness to be discernable in his voice, but this was irrelevant to the boy: the surge in the bond told him everything.

"I hardly think that is necessary," Compton began. "Sookie and I—"

"—and her relation are my guests as long as you remain in my Area," Godric finished, lifting his chin. "I insist you stay in my home." There was a quiet snicker in the bond. Of course Eric would be smug about this; he had been on the receiving end of this gesture more times than either of them could possibly remember, which was far too many in the eyes of the ageless boy.

Compton blinked, head bowed slightly in deference. "Yes, Sheriff."

"Thank you, Godric," Sookie smiled at him, and for a moment he wondered if she was going to curtsey. "I'd be delighted to stay, at least for awhile. Jason, why don't you run and grab your stuff?"

"Wh—Huh?" The Stackhouse boy was staring at Godric, apparently stupefied by the fact that such a small, young being could command subservience from those older in appearance than he. The ancient boy's eyelids lowered in the now-familiar sigh. He was becoming very tired of receiving that look. "Oh, uh, yeah." He sprinted off in what was certainly the direction of what the Soldiers called their temporary homes, pausing only once to call back to the ageless boy, "And I'm Sookie's brother, not—not whatever a _relation_ is."

Godric watched him go, running his tongue over his bottom lip as the faintest spark of interest flickered in the recesses of his mind. Once he would not have minded feeding from a young man as handsome as that—particularly because he had been part of an organization supporting the extermination of night creatures such as Godric. The yawning chasm in his midsection cramped slightly in agreement, and he could feel Eric's knowing laughter.

It seemed the bond was making him more aware of the world than he had been before his child reappeared in his life.

Sookie had also anxiously been tracing his departure; now she looked back at Godric, brow furrowed. "Wait, what about Hugo?"

"Isabel will bring the _traitor_ back to us."

Godric did not have the will the rebuke Stan, and the minutes until the Stackhouse boy returned were passed in a silence that evidently seemed to long to Eric. Even though the Viking did not fidget once, the ageless boy knew his child well: he wished to see Godric safely home and alone with him so they could... talk.

"All right," Jason panted, a large bag slung over his shoulder, appearing to have run all the way back as well, "let's go. I'll go crazy if I have to stay here another minute."

Sookie placed a comforting hand on her brother's shoulder as Stan led the way to his truck. It was but one of many vehicles Godric recognized as belonging to vampires from his Area, parked hastily and haphazardly among the humans', though all of the transportation devices were leaving as their owners evacuated the grounds. Big and black, the name of the _cowboy's_ vehicle had something to do with a sheep, and the ageless boy struggled to recall what it was... With its gender, perhaps? No, that wasn't right...

Stan unlocked the doors—Godric remembered laughing at how startled he himself had been when he first heard the beeping sound the _remote_ made, one of the last times the ageless boy had laughed in an eternity—and sat behind the wheel as Sookie designated herself his passenger. Godric, followed by Eric, Sookie's proud brother, and Bill, slid into the backseat (the rear door on Sookie's side of the vehicle had rusted shut long ago). Jason had wedged his bag down on the floor between the back of Stan's seat and his and Bill's legs; he had taken one look at Eric and apparently decided his belongings shouldn't touch him. The ageless boy almost felt grateful that, though this was a spacious vehicle, the four of them were wedged too tightly together to employ its restraining belts—he was under Eric's scrutiny enough as it was without him attempting to help the boy as he struggled with the clasp. Though he certainly persisted in trying, he had never been able to convince Eric that he could care for himself.

Godric closed his eyes, his head sinking towards his chest in preparation for shielding his sensitive eyes from the glaring headlights to come. The ageless boy had never quite gotten used to cars, not least because he disliked their brightness. (Fire, moon, and stars had aided his already enhanced sight for centuries, and the powerful shine of this modern age was painful in more ways than one.) His Viking, as with most of the vampires Godric knew, had always been more adaptable than the ageless boy, and these strange, horseless carriages had never fazed him.

The drive was commenced in silence. The backroads they were following were sparsely lit and pockmarked with potholes; the shift of Eric's arm and thigh against his own was preferable to the unforgiving plastic which shoved his elbow into his other side with every rut in the earth.

"_Are you all right?"_ The Swedish question was warm on his ear.

Yes, Eric and his emotions were making him far too aware of the world.

But was this despicable boy who had destroyed so many lives all right? Godric didn't know, and almost didn't want to know. But Eric needed an answer. _"I'm fine,"_ he murmured in kind, turning and lifting his head to reassure the Viking with his open eyes—

Headlights flared, momentarily blinding the boy, and he ducked his head instinctively as his eyelids squeezed together. Eric's shoulder radiated heat when Godric's forehead brushed against it.

No, he was most certainly not all right, and knew Eric would know why.


	5. Freya's Blessing

**London, England 1915**

"Can you hear his heartbeat slowing?" A wet humming noise of affirmation reached Eric's ears at the years-old reminder. "Very good. Now, think of the maggots... There—_that's_ it," grinned the Viking as his child jerked herself away from the base of the human's throat, gasping as though someone had been holding her underwater and was only now permitting her to take a breath. (May Ràn drown those who dared try, and never mind the fact that it couldn't kill her—she could still be hurt, if only for an instant.)

He slid closer to Pam on the velvet-upholstered parlour couch and passed her a handkerchief; her hold on the hypnotized man loosened slightly as she dabbed delicately at her mouth. Both pairs of fangs retracted as the scent of blood faded slightly with her crimson-induced near-frenzy. "I think I liked sucking them dry better. Are you sure this is necessary?"

He laughed even though this was far from the first time she'd asked this. "I'm afraid so. The more humans that go missing, the shorter amount of time we'll be able to stay here."

"Then we could go to Paris." Eric had never taken his progeny there, but the city's shops had been a conversation starter lately and he had begun considering escorting her if only so she would stop talking about them. "Godric would faint from blood loss the second he saw you in one of the new dress uniforms for military officers I read about in _Le Petit Parisien_." (The prominent French newspaper was one of many circulating among most European vampires as part of their peaceful effort to prove to themselves that they were better than the humans and their petty wars.)

Eric's chuckle was a bit tired. Would his progeny's and his Maker's shared obsession with his eye color never be subdued? "In all the years I have known Godric he has never lost consciousness at the sight of me in any condition, although in this case I daresay you _both_ w—"

The Viking was abruptly shattered from the chest-down as a pain unlike anything he had ever felt ignited beneath his skin. The sound of his knees connecting with the hardwood floor was lost in the phantom echoes of one of the most agonized screams he had ever heard. His stare was blind, his mouth gasping, and he was drowning in the throes of a cry for help that only he could hear. The bond was pulling at him with a desperation he had not felt in centuries: **_"Eric! ERIC!"_**

Godric had lately begun taking longer and longer periods of time to himself, and only later would the Viking understand that this had been his Maker's way of preparing him for their coming separation. But Godric had consistently returned home before dawn, which had invariably prompted a great sense of relief in Eric. They had constantly traveled together, never venturing far from each other especially in the Early Days, and the berserker had always worried until his Maker returned that something terrible might happen to the boy while they were separated. These sensations of overwhelming pain were proof enough for him that his fears were justified.

"_Eric?"_ A new voice, one he recognized but in this moment barely concerned him; one of the hands belonging to its owner gingerly rested on his shoulder.

"Stay here," he hissed to Pam between clenched teeth, and blurred from the house in the direction the summons was pulling him. He was led through cramped, smog-filled alleyways to the clear expanse of the open shire, and the long grasses echoed the bond's whisper: _**hurryhurryhurry...**_

He nearly tripped over the thing lying in the grass by a dirt road.

He stared at it for perhaps twenty seconds, uncomprehending. And then he knew what he saw, and a cry rippled through the countryside like shock waves after an explosion as he dropped to his knees. Through the mess of grotesquely twisted muscle and jutting bone, he perceived that the boy whose fangs were extended and whose face was contorted in agony was still, barely, intact, though this did nothing in the way of comforting the Viking. He felt his own implements of Death descend at the smell of his Maker's blood. He took one tiny, twitching hand into his larger one and squeezed it gently, experimentally—

—and Godric squeezed back, lips quivering upward in a kind of half-snarl, and it was a moment before Eric realized he was trying to smile. "Well, that's definitely the last time I turn to look at a car before I try to get out of its way." His voice was barely more than a croak. "The... _headlights_ were so bright... I think I smelled alcohol before I was hit," he said as though he could not quite believe this, brow furrowing as if he were struggling to remember. Gray eyes fluttered shut as though the act of holding them open was exhausting. "I _knew_ horseless carriages weren't a good idea," he muttered. His hand constricted around Eric's fingers, and his grip was not painful in the physical sense. "Stay close to me."

Eric shifted nearer, his throat aching, wanting to cradle the boy's head in his lap but fearing the movement would only hurt him more. The times when Eric was forced to become Godric's parent had been blessedly few and far between over their centuries, and whenever the time came its causes were never pleasant. He stroked the back of the child's hand with his thumb, tracing the veins—and in his mind uttered a thousand Swedish curses that he did not think of it sooner. "May I give you some of my blood?"

"Please do." Godric's reply was tight, and the Viking fought down a grimace as he became aware of the feeling of his bones gradually shifting inside him.

Eric rolled up his sleeve and tore generously into his own forearm, carefully bringing the dripping limb to the boy's mouth. At first, the blood merely trickled down past his lips, but as he felt Godric grow stronger the ageless boy sucked at the wound with increasing intensity, and Eric reopened his arm twice before his Maker turned his face away with a sigh and the bite was allowed to mend completely.

A strangled whimpering sound emerged from the Viking's throat as he scanned the small body once more: Godric was healing a bit more quickly now, but he was still far from whole.

The boy looked at him, and this time offered a real smile as he stroked Eric's hand in return. "All will be well in a few minutes, my child," he rasped. "You'll see."

"Holy fuck."

Eric half-turned to regard his daughter, realizing only now that he had neglected to command her to stay put, and a small part of him was free to wonder what had happened to her victim as he injected brevity into his voice, "That sums the situation up quite nicely, Pam; thank you." But then, because blood was welling in her lower eyelids, he relented, "He was hit by a car."

She shook her head, blinking furiously as she came closer, and Eric watched her fangs drop as she gathered her skirts in her hand and knelt beside him. "Either that was ridiculously good driving or you've gotten slow in your old age."

The boy chuckled, then grimaced. "You flatter me."

Several minutes were spent in relative silence, in which the Viking sensed and observed the repairing of every inch of Godric's flesh, and then—

"I will be at your side every second you're out of the house. This will not happen again." The words were out of his mouth before Eric realized he had made the decision.

"You will _be_ Pamela's Maker." The ageless boy's eyes knifed him harder than his words did, and this was not because the child's voice was still barely above a whisper. "She is the one at whose side you need to be, far more than I am. Waiting for something to happen to me is foolish. If I need you, you will know." Godric struggled into a sitting position, and then to his feet, and the Viking and the former prostitute stood with him. He took a step in the direction of home—

—and Eric caught him when he staggered. "Where is the man you were feeding from?" inquired the berserker, pulling the boy close.

Pam gave a half-shrug. "I told him to stay in the house before I went off after you. He was already one of the thousand or so village idiots that seem to be around here before I glamoured him; he's probably still there." At least she sounded like she was willing to help search for a replacement if he wasn't.

The ageless boy muttered in protest, but Eric whispered a shushing finger down over his lips and the Viking felt exhaustion slam down on his shoulders as he quieted. Eric began to lead him towards home, Pam on the boy's other side, and the berserker swore his Maker would never feel this weak again. It was a declaration he made each time the immortal boy was crippled, whether in the physical sense or by mental and emotional strain, but this did not decrease the sincerity of the promise. "Godric's going to finish him off."

* * *

Eric was jolted from his thoughts to sudden silence as Stan killed the engine; their journey home had faded in the wake of his recollection.

_Home._ The word had over the centuries come to be defined as wherever Godric was, even when he and his Maker were apart, and this definition had slipped itself into his thoughts unconsciously.

Every brush of their skin brought sparks buzzing along the hairs of Eric's arms as they descended from the Westerner's pretentiously Southern vehicle, and this only became painful when the space between them increased as Godric led the way into his nest. The Viking decided he would save his questions about this new, coexistence-loving aspect of his Maker for later—all he wanted, needed, now was to be close to and alone with the boy, to ensure he was all right.

A muttered Spanish exclamation accompanied their arrival, and Isabel appeared, rushing forward as if to hug Godric—

She stopped short at the sheer black storm the Viking noticed had appeared in the ageless boy's eyes upon entering the house. For once, he couldn't blame her—he was far more disturbed by the sight than she could ever possibly be—but feeling that lack of feeling, for lack of better terms, was even worse. The Viking often felt guilty when he succumbed to his emotions—which, if you thought about it, really didn't make sense, but it was true—but even Godric's stoic exterior could not penetrate their the bond... Unless, while they were separated, the boy had learned to dominate his emotions even on the deepest level there was?

Following long seconds of silence, in which Eric resisted the urge to pace through her disturbingly contagious agitation and Stan walked right past her without so much as a greeting and on into another room, her hands fell back to her sides and she settled for a simple, "Welcome home, Sheriff. I am glad to see that you are in one piece."

The boy nodded, staring at a point over her shoulder. Eric had spent many an evening in comfortable silence with Godric, but this was not one of those...

Isabel was again the first to speak. Her smile seemed a bit forced, and if she was alarmed by the fact that her precious _science project_ wasn't with Sookie and the others she didn't otherwise show it. "Godric, I am sure you would like to change. I can help Sookie, Bill and—"

"Jason Stackhouse. I'm Sookie's brother," he supplied without prompting, and made as though he was going to put an arm around her—but dropped it when he realized Bill's was already in the way. The Stackhouse boy blinked and looked away, rubbing the hampered appendage slowly with the opposing hand. A small part of Eric wished the kid would have succeeded: brotherly affection would have been far less nauseating than the hand-holding and kissing the Viking had been subjected to whenever he had requested Bill and Sookie's joined-at-the-hip presence.

Isabel inclined her head in acknowledgment before turning back to Godric, "I can help them settle in for you, if you like. I had your room dusted in your... _absence_. Nothing else was disturbed."

"Thank you." Even the Viking had to strain to hear him. The ageless boy gave Eric a long look before starting down a hallway, and despite the darkness in it, something in him leapt because he was permitted to follow.

He felt the others' eyes on his back for only a moment, and then the sensation passed as he heard Sookie begin hesitantly, "Um, Isabel, I was wonderin' if I could borrow a change of clothes..." before tuning her out and focusing entirely on the sound and sight of the cloth brushing across Godric's shoulder blades as he walked. It took a great effort not to walk close to the boy, but displaying his anxiety and affection for him so publicly would have been weak.

The door they entered and Eric shut behind him was nondescript, and he soon saw that the uninspiring portal led into a windowless, uninspiring room. There was a chest of drawers, a writing desk, and a bed—full size, cream linens, two plumped pillows—but these wouldn't stand out in your average furniture shop. The walls were as white as what he'd seen of the rest of the house. In the past, he and the boy would steal something to personalize their dwelling for however long they stayed there—in the Early Days it had been something as simple as a bearskin rug on the floor of a deep, dark cave as a more comfortable place to sleep and have sex—something to be left behind as they moved on. But Eric didn't get a sense of even that here; his scalp prickled instead. He inhaled slowly, quietly. He caught a whiff of a couple of humans and a few specks of dust—very negligent humans these were, then—but otherwise the boy's scent here was decades old, and this soothed the Viking, although he couldn't say why.

"How many vampires live with you?" Eric asked, more to break the returned silence than a real sense of interest. When he had first arrived at the nest with Sookie and Bill to formulate a plan for rescuing Godric, he had noted the scents of many vampires and humans, but Stan's ridiculous gravelly voice and Old Hollywood demeanor had distracted him from asking Isabel about them.

The boy had stopped just before the middle of the room; when he turned to look at Eric, the Viking saw that his eyes had not changed. "Somewhere between ten and twenty, including Isabel, Stan and myself. Many of them have human companions; they come and go." He gave a very small shrug, though his face remained expressionless. "It helps me keep an eye on the troublemakers in my Area."

Eric nodded, the wheel in the basement of Fangtasia rising to the forefront of his mind. Thinking of the bar made him wonder if he should call Pam... tell her Godric was all right—_was_ he all right?—but he thought of the Fellowship and decided against it. There was a very good chance they weren't yet out of the cooking fire, and if something went wrong following his reassurances, that would be tantamount to lying to her. Eric didn't make a habit out of withholding the truth from others, although he would if absolutely necessary, and the only other being he couldn't stand lying to besides Pam was standing right here in front of him.

He noticed a door in the far right corner of the room and entered it—brushing the boy's cheek with the backs of his fingers when he passed him—revealing a full bathroom. "Isabel suggested you clean up." He turned to face the boy, who had followed him as he had hoped he would. "May I give you a bath?"

Godric blinked at him, and the Viking's spine crawled. "I suppose you will."

Eric gazed at his Maker and felt as if someone had attempted to cut his chest open with a penknife as he realized why Godric must have allowed him into his room, why he must have spoken so earnestly of peace in that damnable church. How could he, Eric, have been so _stupid?_ He had been helping Godric deal with this since he had made love to the ageless boy for the first time, all those centuries ago. He should have realized it sooner. If his Maker had been telling the truth in saying that the Soldiers hadn't harmed him, then he had truly lied, because imprisonment of any kind would have been painful to the Godric Eric knew. He stepped close to the small figure, brow furrowed, leaning down to him instead of making him strain up to his face as he had so many others, and said softly, firmly, "No one will hurt you while I'm here—_especially_ not your Maker. Any future enemies will be destroyed if they so much as think of trying."

The silence stretched and stretched until at last Godric nodded, and because those dull eyes twisted his abdomen, Eric turned his back on the immortal child to start running the water in the tub. He turned back around to give him the respect of facing him while he undressed—even before the _romantic_ part of their relationship began, they had bathed beside one another simply because it was convenient—but stared at the outermost point of Godric's shoulder as he slipped out of his clothes. He would admit that he was a coward. This enduring vacuum was something he had never seen take hold of his Maker, and he hoped to never see it again.

When the tub was full, Eric shut off the faucets and offered the boy a hand up into the claw-footed vessel—

But his Maker was still completely dressed. The only movement he had made at all was to drop his gaze to the tiles at his feet.

Eric swallowed. Slowly he walked to the boy and began to remove his clothing. He had once been curious as to what dressing a dead human body felt like to a mortician, because every night he dressed a dead body that was even more supple than it had been when it was alive. Baring this new Godric was somewhat difficult: for example, because he would not respond to indications that he should lift his arms so Eric could pull his shirt over his head, the Viking was forced to move Godric's limbs for him in a bizarre mockery of a Maker's control over his child. Even the boy's torso was stiff under his hands: flesh in which Eric should have felt power but now only received the lifelessness of a corpse. If this was what an undertaker experienced every day, then Eric would never again envy him the company of fresh blood bags.

He picked Godric up—one arm beneath his shoulder blades, one behind his knees—and settled into the tub with him. He worked soap into a lather and began to gradually run his covered hands down Godric's arms—a mere scrap of cloth would not do his Maker's body justice. Reapplying soap when he needed to, he washed the boy's neck and shoulders, his face and hair, his chest and abdomen, his legs... But when he came to the place that, even for the first few times after they had had sex, Godric had still been adamant about caring for himself—may Hel bring her rot-inducing wrath down upon the boy's Maker far beyond eternity—the boy still had not protested Eric's careful attentions. His eyes had been closed the entire time, and the blankness of his face was devoid of his usual tranquility.

The Viking swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before opening them.

He shifted Godric so that his waist was between the boy's thighs and their torsos pressed together, so that he could see what he was doing as he made certain he cleaned every inch of the one who made him. He skimmed his fingers very lightly over the brand on the back of his Maker's shoulder. (He had been told countless times over their centuries, particularly when they were bathing one another or making love, that the mark no longer brought Godric physical pain, but Eric still felt he should be as careful as possible with the damaged skin.) His palm exuded a slightly greater pressure as he ran it up and down the small back, continuing to caress the muscle and spinal knobs long after the last of the soap had dissipated, and after a while his hand ceased its movements as an idea came to him.

Eric had distracted Godric from the memories of his brief human life and turning many times before. This extended period of remembrance, for this was what the boy must be experiencing, was different from anything his Maker had ever allowed him to know. But he had to try.

The bond extended from Eric to Godric in billions of alabaster tendrils, much like the ones he envisioned when glamouring humans, and these were as tightly drawn as bowstrings. (And yet they were not like ones used for hypnotizing, because what they symbolized was infinitely complex, and far more precious.) He inched along them, stepping cautiously over sticky drops of fluid on the spider silk, to the boy's end of their connection. As he went, he thought of many good things representing the affinity between them and the happiness it brought him: the sound of leaves holding a conversation with the wind, the sight of the stars from above the clouds, the way their bodies shifted together in celebration of Freya's blessing... He allowed these and a great many others to brim and overflow within him—overflow to fill the benumbed boy.

The soft intake of breath and the sweet _click_ of descending fangs flooded Eric with a warmth he had not felt since before Godric had told him that he and Pam were to live on their own without him.

His Maker pulled back slightly, and they looked at one another for a long time. The eternal boy's eyes were red-rimmed and bright. The Viking could see the gleam of his implements of creation between his slightly parted lips, and Eric felt his own weapons swing into place as though in acknowledgment of their elders.

This, finally, was the Godric Eric knew.

"I'm afraid I'm out of practice," the boy offered with a small, sad smile. "No one else would... _understand_ as you do."

"I know," Eric breathed, fully aware that the consequences of his Maker's terrible human life were not all that he meant. The bond was not always a one-way street, and Godric's emotions told him what he was not doing during their time of separation as much as what he was doing. And the bond was so, so much more than that... Eric quite literally thought he might die if he were ever released. He had seen others released, and of course they had not died, but they had not had the closeness that he and Godric did—not for so long, anyway. He was still a part of the ageless boy, and recent events had made him pray to Frigg with even greater intensity than he always had that the ageless boy would always be a part of him. "But I'm not."

He tilted his head and brought their lips together, tightening his hold on the boy, and memories of a thousand years ago interspersed themselves with his present as small arms tentatively encircled his neck.

_Cool. Sweet. More. Yes._

He took inside himself his Maker's scent—earth, ink, blood—as his tongue slipped over the familiar pattern of his lips and on the beginnings of the slick insides of his cheeks.

_Poor boy... alone too long... I'll help you..._

A soft sound shuddered from Godric and into him as their tongues met, and the way the boy strove to mimic the caressing darts of his tongue was blessedly, achingly familiar.

_Yes, Godric. That's good. So good. Yes._

His Maker grew rigid when their fangs pressed together, and Eric paused, wanting to savor the small, quick breaths pressing Godric's chest against his.

_That's right... I'll make it all better..._

In four seconds the Viking had them out of the tub, toweled dry and lying on the bed. His kisses trickled down the boy's face to the sweet, smooth marble of his throat as his palms slid up Godric's sides and around to his spine, slipping downward once more... He heard the boy gasp, felt him arch against him, and felt tiny fingers trace the muscles in his back as the small body settled back against the blankets.

_That's it... relax... Trust me, and I will teach you so many things..._

The fingers ran down his sides, and the Viking reveled in the gesture. Small palms pressed into his abdomen, fingers splaying as the tiny hands moved upward, gliding against his stomach and coming to rest on his pectorals. He inhaled against the young neck, pressing his chest into his Maker's grasp, and the boy inhaled more intensely.

_Yes... let your instincts take over... I'm right here... Do you see how good this feels?_

Eric lifted his head fully back into their present and smirked at his Maker, receiving a shaky grin in return. The berserker's lips traveled the ebony collar binding the boy to his past, stroking the ancient ink with his tongue as he kissed it, wishing he could lick it away and leave his Maker clean and new and free of all the unspeakable things he had endured. Small hands caught his fingers and embraced them, and the Viking turned his attentions to the underside of one small arm, pecking lightly with his lips the veins which had become prominent with the boy's desire, wrist to shoulder.

He was so focused on the boy... The outside world was everything that was not Godric, and dimly he was aware that his movements were slowing along with the cosmos. The birds in the great tree Yggdrasil were for once very quiet, for his and the boy's breathing muted their song. The sunlight streaming through the leaves to expose the veins could never be as beautiful a sight as the shine in Godric's eyes when they kissed. The sweet taste of the song-mead found in Mimir's Well, deep among the strong roots, was bland in comparison to the taste of his Maker. The smell of the sea surrounding Ægir's hall in the tall trunk was bitter and monotonous against the cloying subtleties of Godric's scent. Freya's long, soft hair was brittle when laid next to the boy's skin.

A small hand rested on the side of his neck, opposite where he had received his very first bite from Godric, and Eric paused, his eyes closing and his brows pushing nearer towards one-another as he leaned into the point of contact. _"Tell me what you promised me when I was made to be like you."_ The request was low and in his native tongue.

"_I promised I would be your father and teacher... your brother and your son."_ Godric's voice was just above a whisper, and the gentle breeze that was his breath on Eric's cheek was indescribably sweet. The pact had become an aphrodisiac over the centuries as much as it still was a comfort in rare times of insecurity. _"I swore I would walk with you through all the darkness in this world, holding your hand to guide you when you did not know the path that would bring you into the light."_

"_And I will strive to do the same,"_ Eric replied solemnly, and they simply gazed at each other for a long moment before Eric once again lowered his head.

Sucking kisses traversed the small chest to Godric's stomach, his hands curving around the backs of the young thighs in preparation to spread them, and grinned against the quivering torso. "Am I going too quickly for you?"

"No. This is... this is good."

The Viking slithered upward so that they were nearly face-to-face, catching the backs of the small knees under his broad shoulders, and Godric's legs skidded so that his calves came to rest on the tops of Eric's shoulders instead. He kissed the small lips gradually and quirked a perfect, blond brow when he pulled back.

Another glorious smile. He felt Godric's thumb trace the spot on his neck from which his human blood had been drained, and he entered the boy as his hips convulsed forward.

Godric's eyes squeezed shut, his hands shifting at supernatural speeds to grip the lower corners of the pillow cushioning his head as he moaned. He held the position for a moment, most likely unconsciously, and the sight was magnificent. All too soon he relaxed his grip as he caught his breath, and the shapes of his fingers were deeply indented in the soft casing; it was a wonder the boy hadn't ripped through it. Eric wished the pillow's surface wouldn't lift and smooth out to become impressionless once more, so that his effect on Godric might remain far after they orgasmed. But their lovemaking had only just begun. "I was afraid I might hurt you," Godric explained his movements in a whisper as his palms curved against the Viking's biceps.

Eric's voice was equally low as he began to thrust gently. "You don't have to be afraid: you're with me." It was a slight twist in the topic, but the Viking didn't care: Godric's happiness was all that mattered, and now that he had regained it for him, he wanted it to stay forever.

He closed his eyes with the child, focusing on the friction and the cradle of the small hips in his own as he moved back and forth. When they first had sex, the Viking had been shocked at how good it was, amazed to find that their emotional connection only enhanced the act. He soon discovered that his frantic rutting with humans of both sexes as he drained them could not hold a thimbleful of fire to mating with Godric, and though he continued to have sex with humans for the sake of the reputation he had upheld as a human prince, his Maker had been pleased by him almost nightly over their centuries. They had coupled in a wide variety of places and positions, rain or shine as long as there was no danger, their primitive focus entirely upon one-another as the rush gained from feeding morphed into lust.

He heard the boy say quietly, "I won't be, then."

Eric caught the small lower lip in a kiss, brow creasing. He could never tell Godric in words how much he had missed him, not simply because of his pride, but because the words themselves would not be enough.

The pads of little fingers brushed his face, and the wrinkles went away when they were touched. _"Shhh, little one."_ Eric felt the movements of Godric's lips as he shaped the Swedish words against Eric's, and the boy's breath was warm on his face. _"I'm here now. I'm here."_

"_I can feel that,"_ smirked Eric, eye still closed, unable to resist diverting the situation from his weakness as he upped his pace the tiniest bit.

"_I know."_ The breath had begun to puff slightly harder against him in response to his manipulation. Soft cries were now falling on Eric's ears, and the Viking rejoiced in them as they stroked his skin, wet and slick as rain.

It was very good to be inside Godric again.

He felt his Maker press their fangs together for an instant—it was like a vampiric equivalent to a peck on the lips. When he was newly reborn, he had never expected these new teeth to be as aware of the blood in other bodies as they were. Through them, though the boy was always cold to the touch, he could feel the fluid giving Godric life pulsing through the small veins. After several centuries of being closer to Godric than any other being anywhere, the Viking knew whenever there was less blood in his creator than there should be. He had seen immediately upon meeting Godric in the basement that the child hadn't been feeding, in any case, but exactly how long had it been since he'd last tasted real blood?

"You're too good to me." The sadness in the boy's mumble prompted Eric to cease his thrusts and open his eyes, and for a brief second he forgot that his Maker couldn't read his thoughts—not in the literal sense, anyway.

Godric was looking up at him, and he could see shadows of dark clouds beginning to crowd in the edges of the ancient gray irises.

No. The boy couldn't be succumbing already. Not now.

Eric shook his head, barely realizing his nose was brushing Godric's. "You deserve this more than anyone I know." His voice was hoarse, and he choked for a moment as he struggled to get the words out. "Even me."

"I don't know if I can stand being entitled to that much. Even being with you, all these years... I've never grown used to that."

"But I _have_ helped you," the Viking whispered. It was a question, even though it wasn't inflected like one, and he began to wonder if they were even speaking of the same thing anymore.

"_You have, Eric,"_ the boy allowed after a pause, cupping the berserker's cheek in his palm, _"and for that I will always love you most."_

Eric inhaled sharply, closing his eyes as he turned his face to kiss the tiny palm. An ache formed in his throat. The immortal boy expressed his affections verbally far more often than the Viking did, and yet Eric could never get enough of them. The sound of his name on the small lips was a blessing in of itself. _"Thank you."_ It was almost a whimper, and he cleared his throat before trying again. _"Thank you, Godric."_

There was a soft sigh, and he felt cool, slightly swollen lips gradually brush his cheek. Such a little mouth...

He turned his head to look at the boy, one eyebrow lifting as he resumed his movements inside him. "ʻLittle one?ʼ"

Godric's smile was not quite apologetic as his hands fell to Eric's forearms and tightened there, and the Viking was relieved that the shine in the old eyes had returned. "You will always be young to me." The boy's words flowed as they would in normal speech despite how heavy his breathing was quickly becoming. Holding conversations as they coupled had become as natural to them as the act itself. They didn't talk every time, of course—the Viking had to agree with Godric that the relative quiet was nice now and again, so that they could focus physically, emotionally, completely on one another—but it was a good way to combine plans and pleasure. "Although you are—" the boy gasped as Eric shifted forward "—very much a man."

Eric chuckled, kissing the boy leisurely, stroking every inch of the inside of the small mouth he could reach with his tongue, before again increasing the speed of his thrusts. "I'm grateful you still appreciate that."

"I expect I always will," replied the boy after a moment, quite breathlessly, and for a while there were only the quiet sounds of his gratification.

Eric's eyes roamed every inch of the small body that they possibly could, sucking in the old, comforting details like a man gasping for air after an escape from death: the set of his shoulders, the pitch of his moans... No other person could ever attempt this level of familiarity, and Eric rejoiced in that.

Yes, it was very good to be with Godric again.

The heat signaling climax began to build in the Viking's lower belly far sooner than he would have liked. He wanted the slowing world to stop completely, so that he might stay like this with Godric forever... but, he reasoned, they could always make love again. Supporting his weight with one arm, Eric's other hand wound around the young legs, caressing his Maker's chest and belly before descending to stroke the boy.

Godric inhaled sharply. His eyelids began to flicker as the eyes themselves rolled back in his head, exposing the whites. He groaned, arching up against Eric once more, his upper body quivering. His lips, slick with the Viking's tender kisses, began to tremor slightly as his jaw fell slowly open. His fangs gleamed white and hard. His trembling hands clung to Eric even as his head sank back against the pillows. His moans were beautiful.

The Viking was forced to struggle to keep his own eyes open, determined as he was to treasure the sight for reasons he could not explain, and when Godric finally cried out as they reached the highest of heights together, every vein in Eric's body throbbed and he nearly lost consciousness.

_Do you see how good this feels..._

Even sex with his own progeny had never affected him this way, this much.

Panting, with aftershocks of their pleasure flooding his veins, Eric untangled their limbs and rolled onto his side, taking the boy with him and holding him close. He grinned at his Maker... but the gesture fell from his face as he saw the tiny threads of black swarming in the gray of the old eyes before him.

Godric deliberately took Eric's face between his palms before lifting his chin and pressing a slow, indescribably tender kiss to his brow.

The Viking squeezed his eyes shut and drew in a shaking breath with the contact.

Fingertips stroked his cheeks and he opened his eyes to meet a gaze so intense it turned his blood to ice.

"_Eric, my good, loyal son... would you drink from me?"_

* * *

_Author's Note: The particular kind of vehicle headlights introduced in 1915 by the Guide Lamp Company was one of the many ancestors of the headlights we know today. The driver had to actually get out of the car and walk around to the front of it if he wanted to push (or, adversely, pull) a switch which would decrease the intensity to low-beam and vice-versa, and I figured a drunk wouldn't bother with that. The switch looked just like your average light switch, except made of metal and with a knob in the center. Also during that spring of that year, the French military "Horizon Blue" uniforms were introduced, and I immediately grew attached to them because they were something other than the brown and/or brownish-green that you usually saw during the first World War._

_Frigg, also spelled _Frigga_, was Odin's wife, a kind of queen of the gods, and she was the goddess of marriage. The children's rhyme about Jack and Jill comes from a tale concerning the imagination-enhancing mead found in Mimir's Well. Freya was the goddess of many things, among them love and lust, and some Norsemen believed her and Frigg to be one and the same._

_Pam's presence in this story is meant to be canonized with my one-shot "The Siren Song." Written before Season Five began, that was my take on Pam's turning, and it would be fantastic if those of you reading this could take the time to look over and perhaps even review it, but if you don't want to that's fine. The impressions given on Godric's Maker were taken from Pam's commentaries on the Blu-ray version of Season Two of_ True Blood.


	6. In His Maker's Image

Godric's fangs retracted, fingers slipping from Eric's cheeks and back over the tops of his ears to stroke his hair as he awaited the Viking's answer. The fog was beginning to roll in again, but it had not yet enveloped him completely, and he clung selfishly—oh, _so_ selfishly—to the berserker's happiness so that it would not disappear altogether and leave Eric as well as himself in the dark.

The Viking's brow creased, and a faint crushing sensation that was not Godric's own pressed in upon his heart from all sides as the berserker's gaze traced the bloody rims of his eyelids. _"You should feed first."_

Eric really was far too good to him... far more so than Godric, in the span of two thousand years, had ever deserved. The Viking's devotion was not wholly misguided—the boy's own Maker's voice had long been the overture to his self-loathing—but it was still unjustifiable.

Noses and lips brushed one another as the immortal child shook his head. It had been so good to kiss Eric again, to bask in his touch. After his... _unawareness_ of the past months, unawareness that was now returning to him, he hadn't thought it would have been possible for Eric to force his way through this particularly strong patch of fog and hold him with hands that he could _feel_. Godric hadn't even felt the desire to seek pleasure from his own hand in years. His bloodlust and sexual lust were no longer one—something he knew Eric could never begin to understand.

But Godric did not want to leave this Earth without first giving Eric a renewal of a part of himself that they had shared from the beginning, something he knew Eric would treasure even through the supposed agony of his passing, and so he had to make his behest in ways his child could understand. He knew Eric would never take enough to drain him—but wouldn't that be a wonderful way to die, to have his blood go to the one he had wanted so badly to live? _"We have celebrated our reunion with part of you inside of me. Now I wish to replenish the part of me that is inside you. The exchange would be for us alone, to commemorate our bond, and to have human blood be a part of the ritual through me would take away its purpose."_ His jaw felt as though it were pressing up against a glacier as he tilted it to kiss the one trying so hard to save him. _So heavy..._

No, Eric would never agree to killing him, and in any case the ancient child was unworthy of reaching the final death in his arms, because that would be the farthest thing from a punishment. But, in any of its forms, his death _would_ be a punishment to Eric. Eric's record was nearly as blackened as his own, but it was difficult to say if he was too old to change. Godric had certainly changed, but, unlike himself, Eric could find redemption. Eric's actions as a vampire had only been what they were because they were as Godric had taught him.

As Godric's Maker had taught Godric.

* * *

"_Wake up, whore."_ The Latin words opened Godric's eyes before Master backhanded him across the face. When the black spots stopped appearing it was apparent that the man had removed him from his self-made burrow while he was still unconscious. _"I have breakfast ready for you."_

The boy sat up warily, rubbing the dirt from his matted hair; the knowledge that he would only earn another slap—or worse—if he attempted to soothe the sting on his cheek had long dissolved that instinct. His tongue pressed up against two long, pointed things lying against the roof of his mouth, and he _knew_ that the new torture he had endured the previous night had changed him, and he was now like his master.

Gray eyes widened. _Like his_ master—

Godric's torso convulsed as he retched dryly.

"_Stop that."_ The boy screamed as he felt strong fingers twist in his hair and pull his head back, lifting him to his knees. Master was a well-groomed, athletic man—every muscle was more familiar to Godric than he would ever like—but to the boy he had always been unnaturally powerful. _"You should be grateful I wanted to keep you, you stinking Gaul."_

Something terribly hard and cold even through the skirt of his Maker's—was that the word Master had used last night? Yes—tunic pressed into Godric's cheek, and he quieted instantly as a fresh wave of nausea rushed through him. A taut thigh was equally chilly against his arm, through the fabric. The fingertips of the same hand which had been in his hair glided under his jaw to lift his chin, and he looked up—and up, and up—to meet blue eyes just a shade lighter than Eric's would be, shining from beneath curls of ebony hair. His fangs were bared in a grin. _"Let me see your new teeth, child."_

A gruesome force that Godric could not see was pressing down upon the hard things in his mouth. His gums throbbed, and only the lack of the taste of copper allowed the boy to know that they had not bled. His head was so _heavy..._ There was a sensation of shifting, thankfully painless, near the front of his mouth, and his new weapons dropped into place with a fleshy clicking sound.

"_There they are,"_ Master crooned, trailing his thumb down the front of one fang before turning away from him. _"Come now."_

Godric followed him from the narrow alleyway, stumbling and struggling to keep up, nearly overcome by how suddenly _bright_ and _loud_ the night was. Their sandals slapped stone paving as they followed the wide street past a series of shops heavily boarded to protect the wares against night predators of a different sort from Master. A neighborhood fountain gurgled, four thick sides topped with a statue of Janus—water arced on either side of him, from both of his mouths, and into the marble tub—making enough noise for an entire crowd during a day at the market. But Godric and Master were the only ones out this late, at least in this area... And though it was night, moon and stars shone like the sun at high noon. The boy halted in his tracks, amazed at the sheer amount of detail he could see in the carved marble even at this distance.

Another slap, harder. Godric's head rocked back, blood running from between his lips. The pain of the bitten flesh was gone in seconds... _"Stop dawdling. We have to get _inside_, you dim-witted chattel, before your breakfast runs away."_

Godric could only stare at him, knowing he should understand, and blurred memories of things he had witnessed tickled the back of his brain. But his newly enhanced senses overpowered them, and they darted away before they could be caught.

Slight differences in shading in Master's pale skin made it look almost mottled. His lips were practically bleeding with color. And his eyes were very, very bright... Godric had spent nearly his entire life being very close to Master, but seeing him with this overwhelming proximity was unsettling in an entirely new way.

Master continued on down the street and, not wishing in the slightest to be beaten again, the boy resumed following him after a brief pause.

Soon they came to their _insula_. They entered the tall building—brick, covered in a cream-colored plaster that Godric had hoped would soothe his already aching eyes but was now terribly luminous—in the front, climbing the stairs between the first-floor shops and winding around the walkway lining the outsides of the second-floor apartments. Master was wealthier than the tenants living on the floors above, and so the path they traversed was thankfully not rickety wood—if it had been, Godric was certain he, in his current unsteadiness, would have fallen to shatter in the street. And now, in his new form, he was uncertain whether such a painful end would free him of Master's touch.

Heavy brass rings—they shone brighter than gold to Godric—opened on the receiving room. The boy immediately closed them quietly behind him, and followed Master over to the small shrine against the right wall: twin pillars flanking a low table with a small bronze plate and a chipped marble carving of Venus on it. White cloth was draped in heavy folds around her intimate parts. Her arms were open as if to welcome a lover into them. Her lips were curved in a smile, and her eyes were very kind.

Godric had always liked this statue. The Lady had a son, a winged infant whose arrows helped people fall in love, and she cared for him very much. Godric liked to hope, especially when he had been younger, that if she ever had room in her heart for one more son, she would choose him.

Godric immediately moved towards the kitchen to get the food so Master could make her an offering—

But Master reached out with uncanny speed and gripped his shoulder, hard. Godric knew from experience there would be a bruise there in the shape of Master's hand when he disrobed to purify himself before Master slaked his lust—but _would_ it be there? His mouth had healed so quickly... _"Stay here." _Master went into the kitchen himself. Godric immediately knew that there was something in there that he wouldn't want to see. But Master would show him later regardless...

Master returned, almonds cradled in one palm, a bronze goblet in the other. Godric relaxed the tiniest bit as the smell of grapes fanned out over the back of his tongue... although the wine's aroma wasn't quite as pleasant as it had once been. He watched Master murmur the ritual phrases of the request for a blessing, watched him crushing the almonds over the plate, watched him dipping two fingers into the wine before allowing them to drip onto the pile of nutty ashes.

Godric handed him the towel folded under the altar and Master went back into the kitchen, wiping his hands. The boy decided to remain where he was, as Master had not specifically requested that he follow—and he must always do as Master specified—instead gazing around the room, marveling once again at his enhanced powers of sight.

Their apartment, like the others in the building, was not large but filled with glass windows. (Which must be why Master had always went away before daybreak—Godric remembered Master telling him last night that he would no longer be able to go in the sunlight without feeling terrible pain. The boy supposed Master wanted to be responsible for causing all of Godric's pain himself, but he was not eager to test his word in any case.) The boy appreciated how the dull wood of the table and chairs contrasted with the high color of the murals on the walls: the nine Muses danced around a tree heavy with golden apples and bursting with songbirds. The maidens were crowned with wreaths of flowers and clothed in flowing white robes.

In Master's bedchamber, Godric knew all too well, the maenad attendants of Bacchus writhed naked around the god—sporting a bull's-head mask—beating drums, their mouths contorted with sexual ecstasy...

"_Now, remove your tunic for me, so that I may watch your reaction to the food I have brought."_

Godric pulled the garment over his head even before he had ceased his gawking, inhaling to ask if he should undress Master as well—and the purest, sweetest scent fanned out over the back of his tongue: almonds, honey, oranges... If, in this new state of being, sunlight was revealed to have a smell, Godric knew this would only be a miniscule fraction of its components. His head whipped around, searching for the source, and the tunic slipped from his fingers when he found it.

Master was leading a tiny, dirty boy dressed in rags by the hand. His blue-gray eyes possessed the glazed look of those Godric had seen Master hypnotize. Sweat clung to the little child's skin in beads, pasting thin brown hair to his skull, and Godric realized for the first time how strange it was that he had not felt the crushing heat of the nights in _Roma_... He couldn't be more than four years old—nearly the same age Godric had been when he was sold...

"_No."_ Godric was shaking his head, backing away.

"_As your Maker I command you to stop walking."_ And it was as if his legs had been encased in hardened mortar.

Godric turned his eyes away from the small boy and to the man he hated more than anything in the world. _"I will lie beneath you willingly—all night if you want. I will please you in all the ways you have taught me. I will brand myself, gouge holes in my cheeks, mutilate my genitals—_anything!_ I will pretend to enjoy the pain; you will only hear cries of pleasure escape my mouth. But do not make me feed from this child."_

The terrible grin widened. _"You really should be more grateful—it took me a long time to find an unguarded boy whose resemblance to you is so _striking_."_

Godric spat on Master's cheek.

The cursed boy's jaw dropped as he sucked for air—the black spots had returned—as he felt Master's iron grip on the back of his neck, forcing him to his knees. _"This—"_ Master shook the silent, numb child before his eyes, the tiny body flopping like a rag doll _"—this is your nature now. _I_ am your nature. Fighting me is fighting yourself, which is purely nonsensical. Now... _Drink_."_

Godric could not tear his gaze away from the boy whose calmly beating heart was the only thing alerting him to the fact that he was not already dead. Whose calmly beating heart was pumping blood—glorious, hot blood—that hardened him and made his mouth water and his head spin with pure _want_. _"I won't do it."_

"_As your Maker, I command you."_

A helpless whimpering sound slithered from Godric's throat as the invisible force pressed in on him once again. It dug into his skin, tore open his veins, shrieking for obedience. He found his head lowering towards the tiny throat without prompting from Master's hand. Godric tried to jerk his head back, away from the child, but the puncturing, rending sensation only increased when he resisted, joined by another trickle of nausea. His own breathing was terribly loud.

And after a while he could not fight any longer.

"_I am so sorry,"_ he breathed, although whether the apology was to the child or to some memory of himself it was impossible to say.

Godric swore he could feel Master's grin in his veins as he rushed forward and imbedded his fangs in the child's neck.

* * *

Yes, Godric thought as the taste of his progeny overcame the taste of the human child, he was deserving of no one's mercy if he could so eagerly drain children... Many children...

Determination and desire were one in Eric's eye when their mouths parted. _"Where should I drink from?"_

Godric's heart swelled so much that hairline cracks appeared in the silver-chained ice floe surrounding it, and he came extremely close to asking the Viking to drain him. Eric had accepted his request without hesitating a second time, had agreed to it before it became an order, and his voice had been firm and without a trace of worry or some other emotion, just as the boy had taught him. This was the soldier Godric knew, the man Godric loved—loved still, even through the storms of self-hatred and disgust. The sensation was not nearly enough to persuade him to live, but it was enough to help him act as though he wanted to, for Eric's benefit if no one else's. He offered a loving smile and shifted in his Viking's arms to lie on his back, tilting his chin up and away from the child to expose a part of his throat Eric favored. In earlier times, he might have given in to one of the berserker's throatily-whispered offers to feed from an artery in his groin, when he was able to push away his Maker's sneer that he would only be using Eric to please himself. But there was no chance of that now. _"Here,"_ he whispered.

The ageless boy closed his eyes as he felt Eric's skin press closer in around him. He wanted the sensation of his child's lips skimming down his throat to hold more intensity for him than it did.

And yet he did not want it, because Eric's lips had once skimmed down another small neck a similar way—the first of many small necks.

When his progeny's fangs pierced his flesh, Godric did not cry out.

* * *

The enduring child slowly exhaled, his head settling back against the green-covered earth as a final wavelet of pleasure washed over him and Eric untangled their limbs. They lay close beside one another, their elbows touching, as they stretched out in the grassy meadow with their arms behind their heads.

Godric regarded the stars as the soft emerald blades stroked his skin as though in imitation of his Viking's fingers trailing tenderly, sensually, down his sides. The leaves rubbed together with the hushed conversations of lovers. The air brought Eric's scent into his nostrils without prompting—the saltiness of the ocean, a bear-like musk, the tang of a blade—to meet with Godric's own essence—the almond-bronze mixture of the ink punctured into rich soil—to create the smell of their recent intimacy. And the stars themselves were tiny white circles of fire, winking as they promised to keep secret from the blazing sun the lusts of all night creatures, their guiding light ever out of reach.

The world was never so beautiful as it was after making love with Eric.

This was not his first time with the berserker, but the eternal boy still had not fully realized how good it could be to exist so closely to another in such a physical way. He had not been slapped, or spat upon, or choked... He had been held and kissed and rubbed inside with all the kindness his soldier possessed. He had not been subjected to the fervid heat of a branding iron, but had been spread through with the gentle warmth the Viking's skin would always hold for him. After a thousand years of guiltily caressing arousal into submission, the icy ghost-breath of his Maker's laughter on the back of his neck as he trembled and fondled himself as he sat hunched protectively in the underbrush, Eric's sweet words and skilled stroking were carefully peeling away the layers of disgrace he had been taught to feel.

Eric, whom he had found nearly dead and brought back to new life. Eric, who had risen from the ground ready to kill him as vengeance for his dead companions. Eric, whose resentment for him had in recent months become protective concern. Eric, whose transition to a true companion of Death rather than his mere offspring was becoming more apparent with each night that passed.

"_What are you thinking about?"_

Godric smiled and turned his head to look at the warrior looking at him. _"You."_

The Viking returned the gesture. _"What about me?"_

"_How self-centered you are," _the boy teased, chuckling softly. The smile did not disappear when he quieted. _"How good you are to me."_

A pale brow slowly lifted in question.

"_You are _very_ good,"_ Godric assured him.

"_I'm glad to hear that."_ Eric smiled and took the ageless boy's hand, trailing light kisses along what an elderly Gypsy woman had once called the "fate line" in his palm.

A sigh whispered from Godric's lips, and his head rolled on his neck, away from Eric, as he again looked to the sky... The laughing moon hung low and fat, its sheen like those of pearls, and in its breath Godric could hear a warning...

"_We should be going."_ The boy kissed the hand holding his, fingers catching around fingers and tightening for a moment before he rose to pull on his wool shirt and trousers. He was glad to see Eric mimic him without prompting. As much as he enjoyed seeing Eric naked, they needed to get moving if they were to find food for the berserker before daybreak.

Moonlight dappled their hair and clothing as they traversed the woods, and the flowing effect of a fawn's coat was especially beautiful on Eric. Godric had learned to appreciate the irony of an old mind in a youthful body, to use it extraordinarily effectively when hunting, but only recently had he begun to find amusing that irony in the young mind in a more aged body that was his offspring.

Eric walked like a soldier, appearing fully aware of the way his muscles rippled beneath his clothing, and every movement he made was captivating. When Godric had first watched him on the battlefield, he had been stunned to discover that in his thousand years he had never seen anyone fight quite like Eric: a man who was willing to die in battle for the glory but who simultaneously possessed an extremely strong determination to live. The Viking, like Godric, brimmed with contradictions, and this was a very large part of why the immortal boy had decided to give him the gift of this second life they now shared. Eric, in all his complexities, was so beautiful...

Soon smoke carried the scent of some forest beast roasting over a fire, and the two night creatures concealed themselves behind a pair of oaks as they watched a man with the arms of a blacksmith stroke a campfire. A small, blond-haired boy sat on a log across from him.

Godric cocked his head at the sight, considering, before his lips stretched back from his fangs in a grin. He had not seen children often since he had made Eric, given that at night they tended to stay in their homes with their mothers, homes that Eric had not entered because he had not yet mastered hypnotism, and this would be a perfect opportunity for the ageless boy to expose him to the unbelievably rich taste of innocent blood.

The immortal boy caught the Viking's gaze and knew by the surge in the bond that Eric immediately understood what he was to do. The human man's throat was open in the next instant, a deep rumble of contentment in the berserker's throat as he drank, and the tiny one screamed—

But Godric was there, hand over the small mouth, and warm breath puffed against his palm. _"Listen to me."_ He felt the power of his own voice, felt it rush through Eric's blood and through the blood in the boy's ears, echoing with strength despite how hushed it really was. Small, glazed eyes locked on his; he sensed that the Viking was watching him too. There was the _thud_ of a body dropping to the earth. _"Be still, be quiet, and all will soon be well."_ A slight nod, and Godric removed his hand as he looked to his own child.

Brow furrowed, Eric had opened his mouth, presumably to ask a question, but his head jerked around, naturally searching for the source of the new and wonderful fragrance, and confusion was in his eyes as they alighted on the only living human in the vicinity. _"Why does he smell so good?"_

"_Because he is a child, and because children are, for the most part, innocent."_ Godric tucked a lock of stringy hair behind the human boy's ear. _"As I was once innocent, before my Maker took that innocence from me."_ And took it again, and again, and again.

The berserker's eyes widened and Godric's veins were flooded with his revulsion. _"And innocent blood is the best kind. _Children_ are the best kind."_

Godric beamed at his child's insight, leading the human boy by the hand as he went to him, and trailed the backs of two fingers down Eric's lightly bearded cheek. _"Yes, Eric, which is why I would like to share such an... _incredible_ experience with you."_ Godric's gaze returned to the young human beside them, resting the hand that had been caressing the Viking on one tiny shoulder. One fang bared itself as a corner of the ancient boy's mouth lifted in an open half-smile. _"They are almost... a delicacy."_

The Viking jerked away, his features crawling as though an insect had skittered across them. _"All I can think about after feeding is having sex. I never would have thought you, of all people, would expect me to do that too."_

Godric blinked. Once the... _physical_ aspect of their relationship had begun, Eric had never objected to mating after they had fed. Until now. But why...?

And then he understood, and the ancient feelings of nausea returned as a shiver pattered on spider's feet from his toes to the crown of his head. _"No, no, I would never _rape_ them!"_ No wonder Eric had been so horrified! _"Draining them is a _kindness_ compared to that!"_

"_I won't do it."_ Eric's jaw was set, and in his refusal Godric could hear an echo of his own voice from so many years ago...

"_Yes. You will."_ Godric grabbed Eric by the throat and forced him to his knees. _"Now, stop fighting your nature, and drink."_

Eric stared at the human child, and Godric saw the delicious blood that was calling to him reflected in the Viking's own eyes. The ageless boy lowered his head, his lips brushing the berserker's ear as he again uttered the extremes of the afterlife: _"Survival, or death. Now, _drink_."_

A snarl built up from the bottom of Godric's throat as he forced his will down upon his offspring... It was the beast-like will of their nature, Godric told himself, that was showing such aggression towards his Viking...

Soon he heard an answering growl as warmth flowed through him and Eric gave in to him, brushing his mouth along the small neck as if to soothe the human boy before ripping open the vocal cords in one decisive yank.

Godric was grinning when he sank his own implements of Death into the child's shoulder.

* * *

Eric pulled away from Godric's neck after but a few swallows, and he wished more than ever that the Viking would agree to kill him as he whispered, _"I will not take your blood in return; not now."_ He took the large child's hand and squeezed it gently when he felt the compression in his chest once again make its appearance. _"Perhaps later."_

"_I'll order a blood donor for you."_ The compression slowly disappeared, and the boy relaxed. The Viking licked away the last traces of Godric's blood in silence, for the damned child was reminding himself that Eric could not force him to feed, and had no vocal reply to give. There was the quiet sound of Eric's fangs tucking themselves away. _"Are you all right?"_ his progeny asked once more, and Godric looked away from a face greatly aged by his numbed despair.

"_I'm fine,"_ the boy muttered again, and slipped from Eric's arms. He crossed to the chest of drawers, selecting from their contents almost without looking and certainly without caring, slipping on a shirt, trousers and shoes that were all loose and gray and comfortably anonymous.

His Viking wandered over to the writing desk, still unclothed, and opened a drawer at random after waiting for a permissive nod. He paused at what he saw... before slowly lifting out a single sheet of paper that had not yet begun to jaundice with age. _"You kept them?"_ Unrestrained joy colored Eric's voice.

Godric joined him, following Eric's eyes as they traced the raised, cramped cursive. The year was this one, the date just a few months ago. It was the most recent of many letters stacked neatly with their envelopes in the drawers—the very first having been written in 1945. _"Yours and Pam's. In reverse chronological order."_

Eric held the page to his lips, brow lowering as he inhaled the scent of the ink mixed with a trace of the smell of the Viking, and a corner of the boy's mouth lifted slightly: it was something he too had done often, in the past. When the berserker spoke, his voice was hoarse, and Godric caught only the end of the statement: _"... in a couple of Pam's old hatboxes, under my bed."_

Godric was able to summon a quiet chuckle. _"I would expect you to store many things of value there."_

Eric smirked as he repositioned the piece of correspondence exactly as it had been, fingering it with reverence before closing the drawer. _"I certainly do."_

Then he stared at Godric, and the boy was beginning to wonder if the numbness inside him had changed him into some spectral creature that Eric did not recognize, before he stepped forward and pulled the ageless boy against his chest. Godric closed his eyes as Eric's arms came about him and he felt the berserker's face press into the crown of his head. _"No one will hurt you again. I swear it."_ The vow's sincerity was felt no less because it was muffled.

The cursed boy allowed the defined pectorals to cushion his cheek as Eric gently rocked their joined forms. _I already have._ Godric reached up to stroke the Viking's neck; it was the highest point of him he could presently reach._ "I know. I know."_

There was a knock on the door—Eric was dressed and beside him again in an instant, a looming shadow of protection that the boy did not want—and it opened to reveal Stan, hat in hand. "Sir," he began, "Isabel was wantin' to throw a little _somethin'_ to celebrate you bein' back an' all, but I said—"

"That will be fine," Godric interjected quietly. He was long tired of his lieutenants' quarrels, and hearing Stan's side of the argument only made him feel guilty that they happened in the first place. Being the center of attention again was the last thing the deadened boy wanted, but it would make Isabel happy, and Godric just might be able to slip away through the crowd and out of the house to meet his end in seclusion. Eric would not let him out of his sight, would surely follow him to his place of final death, but the tired boy was prepared to cross that bridge when he came to it. "Tell her she may invite as many humans and vampires as she wishes."

The cowboy rolled his eyes, muttering, "She already _has_."

"Stan!" Isabel's clipped pronunciation invited itself in the room, though Godric was able to determine from the familiar acoustics that it was actually coming from down the hall. "How many packs of Tru Blood do you think I should order?"

"Well, how many fuckin' vampires did you invite?" His shout, though deep, was like nails on a chalkboard to the ageless boy. "Jesus." He gave an exasperated sigh, nodded—"Sheriff"—and smirked at Eric, receiving a close-lipped growl from the berserker, before sauntering off without closing the door.

The Viking reached to shut it for him, muttering, "Asshole—"

But Godric slipped under his arm and out into the hallway on impulse, looking back to the one who would miss him most when he was gone, and murmured, _"Come, child."_

Eric followed him.

* * *

_Author's Note: What helped me the most to create the setting of Godric's early life was _A Day In the Life of Ancient Rome_ by Alberto Angela (translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti). It has been in my possession for about a year now, and it is one of the greatest nonfiction books you will ever read in your life. It reads just like a live tour through the city, absent in every way from the difficult-to-absorb "textbook" format of many nonfiction books, and is very thorough: heaven for anyone interested in that historical period, such as myself. The illustrations are detailed and pretty cool to look at as well._

_What we think of as the traditional Roman house was in fact a luxury available only to the richest of the rich. Even people of the upper-middle class, like I imagined Godric's Maker to be, lived on the second and third floors of the thousands of _insulae_ dotting the city (whose modern-day equivalents, right down to the floor plans, are apartment buildings). Poorer people lived on the upper floors where the construction was badly done and it was harder to leave the building if there was a fire._

_Janus was the Roman god of doorways, gates, and beginnings, and it is from his name that we get the month of January. He had two faces, one on the back of his head, just like Professor Quirrell in the _Harry Potter_ series. Janus is one of the few Roman gods who does not come from a Greek equivalent. Venus was a Roman goddess of love—her Greek counterpart may have been Aphrodite—and her son was Cupid, whom the Greeks called Eros._

_Godric's and his Master's conversations in their flashback, as mentioned, take place in Latin, while Godric's and Eric's conversations throughout the chapter are still taking place in Swedish as a continuation of Godric's request in the previous chapter._


	7. Les Cloches de l'Abbaye aux Hommes

"Welcome home, Sheriff. We are all... very relieved."

Eric snorted quietly from where he stood leaning against an opening in the wall that wasn't quite a doorway, arms folded, to observe the ritual greetings. That power-hungry _ranchero_ dick was the last person to be relieved that Godric had returned safely home, and everyone knew it.

But the immortal boy _was_ being shown the respect he deserved, at least by his other subjects, and so the berserker didn't feel the need to challenge the level of truth in Stan's words. Not again, not yet. The Viking could feel his Maker squirming with each statement of welcome and subservience—could feel it emotionally and literally, as though an insect were crawling up his back and his flesh was twitching as he tried to subtly get rid of it—but the small face and body remained expressionless. Godric had never been comfortable whenever someone showed him the slightest hint of praise or admiration, and Eric had always felt his guilt at receiving it, no matter how many times the berserker had told him that he deserved every syllable of appreciation. But the guilt their bond was now giving Eric was far more intense than any reluctance he had ever felt from the ageless boy, and even that intensity was bizarrely contradicting itself in that Eric _knew_ he should be feeling it much more strongly than he was.

What had those religious fanatics _done_ to him?

Stan stopped in front of the Viking, and he and the berserker glared at one another before Eric allowed him to squeeze through the small space between his right side and the wall, recognizing that the refusal to take advantage of the plentiful room on his left as an excuse to try to get in his face. He was almost grateful that the cowboy had left that pretentious hat somewhere so he wouldn't have to fit the damn thing between them too. Their eyes did not leave each other until Godric's lieutenant was through the opening and Eric was free to return his attentions to the immortal child.

The Stackhouse boy was talking to Godric now, apologizing for what the Fellowship had put the undying one through—as he should. Jason had nowhere near the amount of intelligence needed to lead a full-out attack on vampires, but he had still been a part of a group whose leaders certainly did. And a certain... _extracurricular activity_ of his had not helped his cause. Eric suddenly, desperately wanted to see Godric take the fool someplace more private and drain him; wanted to see the eternal boy relish the old ways once again; wanted to watch Jason's blood drip down his chin.

"You helped save many lives today, Mr. Stackhouse. Please know you have friends in this Area whenever you visit."

Eric blinked.

What had they _done_ to Godric?

But Jason had thanked him and was now walking away, clearly oblivious to the fact that he was about to bump right into the berserker, and flinched in surprise to find his way blocked, looking up and up until he reached Eric's face.

"Hail the conquering hero." The Viking's tone was far from worshipful.

It was evident as soon as Jason grinned that that same tone had gone far over his head. "Naw, I'm no hero!"

A weaker man might have burst out laughing.

Eric thought of his Maker's earlier hunger for the Stackhouse boy's blood and found the perfect lead-in to cluing Jason in on the fact that his _drinking binges_ had not been covered up as well as he would probably like. "Oh, you _are_ in this town. But in my Area we know you well as a buyer and user of vampire blood, and that's a _very grave_ offense."

The Viking could almost hear the blood draining from beneath Jason's tanned face as he began to stammer. But if it was Godric's wish to keep the Stackhouse boy alive, then the Stackhouse boy would be kept alive, with no regard to personal desires. (Eric was still a good soldier, was still Godric's good soldier, and though he may not always agree with them he knew how to take orders.) The look on the kid's face was nonetheless very satisfying.

"Yeah, listen, I—I don't do that no more—"

"_All things_ considered, however," the Viking continued as if Jason hadn't spoken, "we'll call it even." The Stackhouse boy grinned once more, unaware that Eric wasn't finished. "But you won't be doing it again."

Jason's relief was so great that Eric could smell it in his sweat even as he nodded slowly. "Yeah..."

Eric shook his head to demonstrate the reaction the kid should have used, once again finding he was enjoying himself far too much... But Godric was safe, if hungry and... _distant_, Godric was _safe_, and so why shouldn't the berserker enjoy himself?

Jason made the correction, closing his eyes for a second as he did so. "No... no... Got it."

"Good boy. Run along." The Viking shifted to allow the kid to pass him by, incisors protruding slightly over his lower lip in a grin when he was gone. He caught Godric's eye as yet another underling left the line, and the tiniest candle flame of warmth flickered in their bond as the little child blinked at Eric: his Maker was pleased with how he had handled Jason.

The Viking wanted to drop to his knees before his creator and thank him for once again summoning that wonderful sensation between them... one of many sensations he should have felt as soon as Godric had gone missing. Even outside the Fellowship, he couldn't have been less certain that they had the boy, and Eric was Godric's child. He should have _known_ that. It was his _right_ to know those things.

He couldn't put it off any longer—he _had_ to know what had happened to Godric. Even the residue of the boy's human past wouldn't have affected him for this long, and during those tempests of memory the Viking had certainly been aware of his Maker's pain, far more than the child would have ever wanted him to be.

What had those self-righteous pissants _done_ to the boy he once thought could never die?

But then Godric's eyes jerked to the left of the Viking before returning to his face: it appeared Eric had received a silent "Run along" of his own.

The berserker did not want to leave Godric, wanted to be far closer to him than he was, but he turned away to lose himself in the crowd regardless, confident he could still reach his Maker quickly if he was needed.

A glint of gold caught his eye. His first thought was that it might be worn by Isabel, but then he recalled that, after she had gotten all of the nestmates and guests settled in for the gathering, Stan had none-too-gently hinted that there was a traitor still at the church and she had better go and pick him up herself. She had gone rigid, her Hispanic features appearing paler even than usual, clearly understanding the man he meant even as she futilely questioned why Stan hadn't already brought the person who had betrayed them back here with him. She was already blinking back blood when she hurried past Eric and out the door. Godric had sat in the chair in which he now rested throughout the entire exchange, his eyes distant...

But the golden cross pendant evidently, mysteriously, belonged to a fangbanger, if the bite marks on the base of her neck were any indication. The girl was small in stature and pretty, with Asian features, and her reddish sweater would have been an appropriate, if rather boring, piece for wear at Fangtasia. (Pam might have taken her under her wing, if she found the girl attractive enough, tutting that her new pet would never again be allowed to wear such God-awful clothes. The girl would no doubt appear the next night in the bar, dressed in the latest fashions in leather, with a few tiny drops of Pam's blood pumping through her veins.) She stood in a corner, evidently "people-watching" as she nursed a martini.

Something clenched in his chest with the reminder that Godric had almost been taken from him.

"I wouldn't wear that around here if I were you," said the Viking, nodding to the cross as he walked up to her, working to keep the anger in his voice nothing more than slight indignation. "Our kind are not exactly _church-friendly_ at the moment."

The girl started. "Huh?" Blood fanned out under the thin skin of her cheeks as she looked down at her necklace. He could hear the scarlet liquid rushing through her veins as her heartbeats quickly increased in speed, _wshhthump wshhthump wshhthump_, and the sound was delicious. (No human's blood could even attempt to compare with the undying boy's, of course, but his consumption of his Maker's complex ruby life-source had only thrown into sharper focus his Maker's hunger, and therefore his own.) "Oh, _shit_, I didn't even realize—"

"No, you didn't," Eric agreed to her back as she hustled across the room, slipping the pendant under the collar of her shirt as she did so, appearing from the hunch of her shoulders to want to find someone to talk to who was less intimidating... the Stackhouse boy, perhaps?

There had once been a time when entire religious orders had been subdued almost as easily...

* * *

**Caen, Normandie (Medieval France) 1236**

Eric would later discover that the abbey in the woods was a gorgeous palace of local stone abundant with stained glass mosaics. Its spacious library brimmed with books enough to supplement discussions on the foolishness of humanity far into the winter, when he and the one who had given him new life would once again be forced to ration the surrounding villages and towns to the last drop of lifeblood. But it was summer now, and Godric had agreed that here they could be as messy and generous in their violent natures as they wanted. This was exactly what Eric wanted to hear, and as a result many of the monks sprawled dead and dying in the various chambers and halls had been his victims. His bloodlust was not as potent now as it had been just over three hundred years ago, but it had certainly not diminished completely, and Godric had told him it never would. After all, the bloodlust made them who they were, helped them to survive.

But the smells of the animal hides used for parchment and of the various ingredients comprising the colored inks had gradually interspersed themselves with the wonderful scent of human blood and temporarily sated that appetite.

The Viking watched Godric run his finger down the spine of one particularly thick and dusty volume. At the boy's insistence, the books were to be kept as clean as when they were found, so as not to blot out the text and impair comprehension. The Viking and his Maker had washed the blood from their pleased bodies before entering the room, using water from the small well in the courtyard, and donned the robes of two of the men who had become their food. Godric's habit was, naturally, several inches too long, while Eric's was much too short. But Godric _had_ been able to roll up his sleeves, with some difficulty—the insistence that the boy could take care of himself came as expected—and the extra fabric accommodating one holy man's large belly had fit Eric's long torso quite nicely, so the new vestments weren't as misfitting as they could have been.

"_I must admit,"_ the boy said, pulling the treatise he had just been stroking down from the shelf and slowly flipping its pages, _"I am eager to see the lies humans have told one another about our species over the centuries laid out in a chronology. It would certainly be amusing."_

Eric very nearly snorted. He didn't approve of lying about another creature altogether, as Godric very well knew—if a man was ugly, he should be told he was to his face—but they had lied in order to live among humans often enough now that the Viking could not deny it came in handy once in awhile. _"I just wish they would gossip about us in the same language."_

The smile Godric offered him had often made Eric feel rather young and foolish, and this time was no exception. He no longer hated the sensation, because its source had come to mean so much to him, but he still was far from comfortable with it. _"The words I grew up with are much older than yours, and yet people are still learning from them,"_ Godric said, hefting the tome in his hand. _"Even if the tongue of your human associations is one day no longer widely spoken, you and I will remember it. The lifestyle of a berserker is not for everyone, my child."_

In their earlier years together, the berserker had often snapped at Godric for calling him that—imagine, a little boy referring to him, a grown man, as a child!—but within decades the Viking had grown to anticipate and even cherish the affectionate moniker.

Eric sighed through his nose as he moved to look out into the moonlit night through one of the lancet windows. At least the forest here had some of the same kinds of trees as in his native land. _"It should be."_

There was a soft chuckle, and the Viking heard the _swish_ of cloth and the _pat_ of bare feet on wood. A little hand pressed down on his shoulder as though it was using him for leverage. Something cool and gentle pressed against the nape of his neck, sucking briefly, before pulling away: a kiss. Eric closed his eyes, imagining just how far up on his toes the boy must have had to stretch to reach that spot.

"_I used to say the same thing about the legionnaires of my time."_ Godric's breath was warm on his neck. The small hand slid over his shoulder and down to rest in the middle of his back as the warmth disappeared. There was another quiet chuckle. _"I will be contradicting my own condition by saying this, but you know as well as I that a child cannot—"_

A _click_ of emerging fangs interrupted his Maker, and Eric whipped around as the touch on his spine disappeared, his own weapons descending, preparing himself to defend the boy to the final death—

Godric was staring in the direction of the doorway to the library, shoulders hunched like those of a hound on point... but there was no one there, and the mutual surge of adrenaline passed. Eric's brow furrowed. _"What did you hear?"_

The boy turned his head slowly towards him, and the look on his face flooded the berserker's eyes with a familiar red haze. His veins were hot, his fangs throbbing, and imaginary heads were tumbling from scarlet shoulders before his eyes. _"We missed one."_

The child darted off a second after the words were out of his mouth, and Eric was grinning even as he struggled to keep up. They dodged and leapt over bodies as the halls blurred by until they came to the top of one of the larger towers. A balding eremite yelped in shock and reached for the thick bell rope the bulky bronze _cloche_ was attached to—but Death leapt on him with a snarl, knocking the man flat on his back.

_Ringing that hulking thing every hour of every day must have made him almost deaf. Otherwise there's no way he couldn't have heard our fleeing feast downstairs,_ Eric thought as he quickly cast his eyes about the spacious room for more occupants (instinct had overruled Death's indications that this man was the only one left alive, and instinct was quickly proved false). A series of other bells of varying sizes were revealed to him, as well as several large glassless windows, and a small bed off to the right that was pushed awkwardly against the curved wall.

"_... did you get this?"_ The bells pealed unmoving against the power of Death's raised voice, pulling the berserker from his observations. Death held a closed fist up in front of the man's glassy eyes. Eric could not see what was in it, but—he supposed it was a new, temporary side effect of the bloodlust—he really wanted to.

He could smell the blood in Death's sweet body pulsing with an otherworldly awareness. Could sense the silhouette of the muscles in Death's back and arms tense where he crouched on the monk's chest. Could see the ice of the underworlds hidden among Yggdrasil's roots shining in Death's ensnaring gaze.

Death's was truly an incomparable beauty.

"_It was given to me when I was ordained by Father Estienne to symbolize the rising of Christ from the dead."_ The lay brother's voice was slow and monotonic.

"_I am older than your Christ,"_ Death replied as he looked down on his ignorant victim with something like a mockery of pity. _"He was far from the first of my kind."_

The man's brow lowered gradually in a reaction that was probably supposed to be anger but, when coupled with the utter lack of emotion occurring when he spoke, came across as a doubtful statement. _"Jesus was the Son of God."_

"_Why, then, so I must be,"_ Death replied sweetly, and buried his fangs in the monk's throat. Eric sped to the human's other side, rejoicing in the opportunity to drink with Death as his own weapons opened the holy man's forearm. As with most humans, the holy man's blood was thin and hot and temporary, not at all like the thick, cool, enduring fluid that was the blood of Godric.

The Viking sat back on his heels when their victim had been drained, a noise of contentment leaving his throat as he licked the last drops of blood from his mouth. He smiled when Godric did the same, and gently pulled the boy over the corpse and onto his lap, extraordinarily conscious of how far his Maker's habit rode up when the small thighs shifted to either side of his waist. The berserker nodded to the small, curled fist. _"What was it you took from him?"_

The boy smiled. _"Something for you."_ His gaze dropped as he slowly opened his palm: the talon of an eagle strung on a thin chain rested on the pale flesh. The chain was similar in appearance to silver, but it did not burn the child's flesh, and in the back of his mind Eric wondered what it was made from. _"I saw it under the neck of his robes and immediately knew I wanted it to be yours."_ A sensation of heaviness that was not his own settled on the berserker's shoulders. _"I realized long ago that, though I have given you new life, you had never received anything of lasting material value from me, and I know how you admire pretty things. You are my _child_, and I... I confess wanting to indulge you more than I should as your parent, as I was never... This was a perfect way for me to do that."_ Gray eyes lifted to meet his, and in their depths Eric glimpsed fears that were centuries old. _"Do you like it?"_

Eric swallowed in an attempt to reduce the sudden swelling in his throat. _"Of course I like it."_ He kissed the small nose as a smile spread beneath it—the weight lifting from his clavicles, replaced with a warmth like sunlight—and slipped the chain over his head. _"And overcoming your fears just to have sex with me is practically indulgence in of itself, so don't worry—you have indulged me many times over."_ The backs of his fingers trailed down one smooth cheek; his eyes crinkled when he smiled. _"Will you allow me to return the favor?"_

Godric closed his eyes when he pressed their fangs together; Eric did the same when he felt little fingers pass through his hair in a single long stroke. Their lips brushed as his creator whispered, _"Yes, Eric. I would like that very much."_

The Viking curled his palm around the back of the ageless boy's neck as he kissed him deeply, head nodding in fractions as he switched sides, tongue moving in-and-out with a deliberate sensuality that made his Maker gasp and small hands contract around his biceps. The berserker paused to give the child time to adjust; their faces were still touching.

It was a while before Godric caught his breath, and when he finally spoke his voice was slightly hoarse. _"I have rarely felt so happy in all my life."_

The Viking simply nodded, and his nose rubbed his creator's with the gesture of comprehension. There was a weighted pause, and then—

"_Out of every creature I have ever spent time with on this Earth, I love you above all others."_

Eric's eyes snapped open in time to see the child swallow heavily as they looked at one another. The Viking's blood raced: the last confirmation of love he had received, at least in so many words, had been from his mother, many many years ago. He too swallowed and kissed the inside corners of his Maker's eyes, cradling the boy against his chest as he rocked him gently. His thumb rubbed small, slow circles into the nape of the tiny neck. _"I know. I know."_

* * *

"By Eric?"

Sookie's voice snapped him out of the memory, and Eric wandered in its direction to find her and Bill standing off to one side, deep in conversation. Someone, Isabel or a close friend of the female lieutenant's by how fashionable it was, had lent the waitress a white dress that, although it didn't reveal the slightest hint of cleavage, certainly looked nice on her. Pam would approve. "Mmmm... heard my name. I hope you were speaking well of me?"

Sookie was instantly aggressive, and again the cute memory of her trying to intimidate him in Fangtasia flickered in the back of his mind. "Why should I? You let me walk into a trap."

"I regret that." And he did. Her talent for head-shrinking had been very useful to him, and the next time he wished to employ them it would be harder than ever to get Bill off his back. "If I had known it was possible—"

"You _did_ know," Sookie interrupted him, and he was slightly miffed at not being allowed to finish his sentence, "but because it was _Godric_, you'd risk anything!"

She had said his Maker's name as though mocking the immortal child's importance, mocking the blood he still shared with the boy, and a great weight settled on his chest as heat flared in his veins. How _dare_ she! How dare a mere human try to establish herself on a pedestal in his mind that was higher than Godric's! She was a gob of spit in the street compared to the ageless boy. "The bond between a vampire and his Maker is stronger than you can imagine." It took everything he had not to get in her face, to keep his fangs in check, to restrain his bellowing indignation from echoing off every wall in the nest.

But then an idea occurred to him, and he smirked, eyes flickering from her to Bill and back again. "Perhaps one day you'll find out."

* * *

_Author's Note: The title of this chapter is French and translates to "The Bells of Men's Abbey," and was inspired by the first song in Disney's _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_, titled "The Bells of Notre Dame." There actually still is an abbey for men in Caen, France that was built back in the eleventh century, called "_Abbaye aux Hommes"_, or "Men's Abbey." I was searching the Internet for medieval towns on the coast of France, about ready to plop a fictional abbey down in one of those towns and mention in the narrative that it would later be destroyed, when Google provided a place to my exact specifications._


	8. Fault Lines

The line of subordinates only seemed to increase in length as the night wore on, and Godric could not even find it in himself to wonder why they were here. A tiny part of him did wonder exactly when the one entitled to be greeted with such awe and reverence had left this chair and put him in his place, for it was a very young chair and the eternal child had been beneath such respect for a very long time. Godric found he did not recognize many of the vampires passing through his home, nor their human companions, and through this multitude it appeared his nest would change and thrive quite well without him.

Eric too had made his way through his father's house, as his terribly good hearing had caused the exhausted boy to be persistently aware, speaking to vampires and humans alike. Godric barely comprehended what his underlings were saying as they each took their turn in expressing their gladness that he was safe, their voices muddled and echoing as though they were speaking to him from opposite ends of the bottom of a murky pond, but Eric's voice was brought to his ears with a clarity that, after the past couple of years, Godric would not have thought possible. The berserker had succeeded in his ridiculous quest for a blood donor, as Godric had known he would, and was now speaking to the vampire under his jurisdiction. Only Eric's side of the conversation came to the dying boy in a way he could understand, but he soon realized that they were discussing the girl who had been in the basement of the church... What was her name?

_No. Nonononono._ She was one of the few he had met, human or vampire, who was sincerely passionate about the coexistence of their two species. Her name _must_ be remembered.

Was it Susan? Sarah? Samantha?

Godric closed his eyes so briefly that to all but Eric it would appear a mere blink. _Come on._ Even human men in their eighties could remember the names of those they considered important. The curious vampire had become friends with many elderly humans these past few decades, strived to learn all he could of the peaceful truces acquired by some enemies in old age, but most all of them had died long before he could share with them just how much he too knew of the effects of a long life. Effects such as short-term memory loss.

Sharmila? Syeda? Solveig?

Solveig...

_Godric watched his child stare into the horizon without seeing it; the Viking's recount of the werewolves' slaughter choked its way out from between clenched teeth as Eric's eyes burned with bloodless rage. He imagined a tiny baby girl, bundled in rags, cradled against Eric's beating human heart..._

No. If her name had been Solveig, Godric would definitely have remembered it.

"Are you picking a fight?" Eric's voice brought his own conversation once more into the front and center of the ageless boy's fading reality. Godric didn't need to look at his child to see him towering over his weaker adversary, grinning, with eyebrows raised. "I'd like to see you try."

Over the span of a thousand years, Godric had taught Eric to destroy many forms of life in his pursuit of survival and personal pleasure... had, if one disregarded the Viking's devotion to Pam and to Godric himself, taught Eric to be like Master.

Godric had grown more and more tired and powerless as the night dragged on, unable to weaken the memory of the man by referring to him simply as the one who tossed the slave boy carelessly into the afterlife, and so Master he would be until Godric reached the far-off True Death. The Judeo-Christian God had occupied the elderly child's attentions when the Fellowship of the Sun had first risen with vampire-hating fury, and the ageless boy was certain that that divinity, if he truly existed, would decree that he was to spend his new eternity with Master.

Unless he could, by a sliver of chance, come up with some worse punishment... But the ancient vampire, in all his years of torturing humans for sport, could not come up with one.

A small part of Godric's brain was telling him he should be feeling nauseated about now. But his vomiting reflex had been subdued by the vampire part of his body long ago.

_The branding iron was pressing against his shoulder..._

But the enslaved vampire did not scream. Why should he? He was not in pain. He was Here and also There, unable to feel the searing heat because he had finally forgotten it, forgotten it at a time when he perhaps needed the memory of it most. He had never enjoyed his own pain, even this glazing stupor had not twisted that around for him, but pain was merely one of many sensations rapidly draining from his cupped hands. He fancied a member of the Fellowship could have stepped into the nest right now and cut off his legs at the knee with a silver knife and he wouldn't have felt a thing. This... _anesthesia_ was quite...

The door to the nest opened, and his nose was forced to register two familiar scents by the night air being swept along by their owners' movements: Isabel's and... a human's. She walked briskly into the room—her similarity to Eric in their choice of dark clothing would once have been bizarre to Godric—marching a man with dark features in front of her by the collar of his shirt.

"Here is the one... who betrayed us." Isabel's voice was broken by the clotting mist in Godric's mind and by something he did not have the energy to identify. She had not always sounded this way, he knew that... didn't he?

She kicked the human and he fell to the ground before the tired boy. The man rose to his knees, hands shaking in his lap, and Godric might have once been surprised to find that, after studying his face for a while, he knew this man. "Hugo." He did not feel pleased at himself that he, miracle of miracles, remembered the name, and nor did he want to, because with the name had miraculously come the reason why Godric knew him. "He is your human, is he not?" The boy looked up at the woman to indicate he expected an answer. He knew she would require that much of him, although he could not understand why. Hadn't she known what to do in this situation? Why had she come to him?

"Yes, he is."

Godric blinked slowly up at her. Why couldn't she see he was the last person fit to pass this simple judgment? "Do you love him?"

"I..." There was blood on her cheeks, dried, faint lines of it. She ducked her head, pressed her lips together, as though holding back more of it. "I thought I did..."

Some part of Godric should have been surprised that he was able to muster what he recalled of an empathetic smile. "It appears you love him still."

"I do. I'm sorry." Isabel sniffed, indicating the man at her feet. "But you are my Sheriff—do with him as you please."

Sheriff... an interesting title. He had never bothered to find out where it had originated. He probably should have. Isabel would have found the information interesting. She would have found anything to do with him interesting. Her loyalty to him, after Eric and perhaps even after Pam, was the strongest of all his underlings'. She had been his mother in the absence of Eric's presence as his father, always ready with a willing ear when he needed to talk about anything at all, offering her point of view and the occasional hug when she felt he required it. She had learned much from him of coexistence and treating one's subordinates with fairness over the decades she had assisted him, and she knew everyone in the nest better than he ever could. She would be the perfect Sheriff for them once he was gone.

The realization that he had not yet passed sentence buzzed around the back of his brain like a very large and extraordinarily grotesque fly. Why did the largest responsibilities always fall to him? Thankfully the question did not bring forth elaborations of itself, and the boy looked down at the man, pretending to review Isabel's statement as he nodded at him. "You are free to go."

Greenish eyes widened up at him. "Huh?" The man's voice was softer than his—an admirable feat.

"What?" Stan's growl came as expected, and Godric was forced to register the disturbance in the air around them as the cowboy stepped forward.

Godric did not raise his voice as he looked to his lieutenant, merely added a firmness to his inflections, although he _did_ understand that Stan had heard him perfectly well. "The human is free to go. And do not return," the elder vampire added to Isabel's human, "I fear it is not safe for you here."

"This is a travesty."

Godric lifted his chin as his eyes met Stan's. "This is my verdict." The boy's gaze drifted, and he was almost startled to find his child standing at the edge of the room, shoulders tense as though he was anticipating something. But was the berserker anticipating anything? Godric had no idea. He knew he should want to know, knew the connection they shared should have provided him with the answer, but he was too tired to care. "Eric?"

He had said the name without purpose, yet the Viking stepped forward as the boy knew he would, and Godric struggled to find something for him to do. "Escort them out. Make sure he leaves unharmed." Yes, it would be good of Eric to do this for him. Eric was the only one he could presently think of who would follow his order to the letter.

"Yes, Godric." The response was prompt, without question, without emotion. The boy was almost glad: emotion could be a terrible thing. The Viking moved towards the human—

But Isabel drew the boy's eye, her hands resting on her knees as she placed herself on his level—out of reverence or pity? "Thank you. Thank you, Sheriff." The former, then...

He nodded, and he realized they had left only when Isabel paused in the opening nearest him in the room holding him prisoner, standing in the opposite direction from which she would have needed to move to exit the house. For a second, it appeared from her facial expression that she wished to say something to him, although the chair might have had better luck in guessing the expression's meaning than the boy sitting in it.

But then his child was filling that same... doorway?, dismissing the woman with closely-cropped hair in a long black coat who was suddenly standing before the boy—how had she gotten there?

"Hugo has been dispatched." Eric spoke as soon as she was gone, crouching beside the chair that Godric no longer remembered why he was holding a grudge against, and the boy turned in the chair towards his child. The gesture was born out of old habit that had morphed over the centuries into reflex. "I told him not to stop driving until he reaches the Mexican border."

Isabel's human would be safe, then. Godric supposed he should be glad of that.

"I've arranged for an AB negative human for you. Extremely rare."

"Thank you." There was self-pride in Eric's voice, as Godric had known there would be. Eric had always strove to provide for him whenever he could, to hold up his end of the promise they had made so long ago. But soon the Viking wouldn't need to provide for him anymore. "I'm not hungry."

"You have to feed eventually." The berserker's voice had lulled into the familiar cadences used when he was attempting to coax the boy into doing what he wanted. "I doubt the Fellowship had anything to offer..." _As I would have offered you every last ounce of my blood_, his voice said. _As I offered you my affections earlier this evening, and you accepted them._

Godric almost wanted to hate him for the smugness in his voice. But, fog or lucidity, Godric could never hate Eric, not really.

The boy watched the smirk on his child's face disappear. "Why wouldn't you leave when I first came for you?" The question sounded as though it had been long in coming.

"They didn't treat me badly." They had given him a room to rest in while he waited for his execution, and even Mr. Newlin's wife had come down every once in awhile to talk to him. Despite her frustrated loyalty to the man as his wife, she had been a very, very lonely woman... Godric might have once felt sorry for her. "You would be shocked at how ordinary most of them are."

Eric's brow lowered as he stared up at the boy. "They do _nothing_ but fan the flames of hatred for us."

"Let's be honest." They, two souls damned to their separate, personal hells for all the blackness in them, deserved that much of each other. Even the fog allowed him to acknowledge that. "We _are_ frightening. After thousands of years, we haven't evolved. We've only grown more brutal... more predatory. I don't see the danger in treating humans as equals. The Fellowship of the Sun arose because we never did so."

The dying boy wished he could feel terrible about the confusion sweeping over his child's various features. No, Eric would never understand coexistence, but Godric had to pass his views on to his child. It was his duty as his Maker.

"Is that why you wouldn't fight when they took you?"

Of course Eric would think that he had been captured. The idea of surrendering himself to the slaughter had been nonsensical even to Godric—at least up until a few months ago, when the mist began cloaking him in earnest...

Godric was almost surprised that the sad smile he offered his little one came to him naturally. "I could have killed every last one of them within minutes." Memory of an abbey, of the bell tower where he had given Eric the claw pendant he could see he still wore, flooded his decaying brain, and he _knew_ his child had been thinking of it too. The boy was too engulfed in reliving the monks' terrible, bloody deaths to feel any semblance of happiness of this proof that their bond still existed. They were but one of many groups of humans who had died in minutes by Godric's hand. "And what would that have proven?"

It appeared Eric had no answer for that—his gaze drifting to the boy's feet—but when he at last did speak there was a coarseness in his voice that only came when he was admitting something he was particularly ashamed of. _"When you reprimanded Stan for questioning your verdict, I searched the bond for your anger... and found nothing. The last time I felt anything from you was after I let the Stackhouse boy go without punishment for consuming vampire blood. And the church... I wasn't even sure they had taken you. I only felt your presence there once you called me."_ Only the fact that Eric was addressing him in his native tongue made the boy aware that there was a crowd on the other side of the wall, and outside their little room was a world who did not understand what they once had. _"Whatever it is I have done to deserve this lack of contact, I apologize."_

Godric stared. He should have known Eric would try to shoulder a weight that was much too heavy for the ancient boy. He was almost stunned the Viking hadn't already collapsed beneath it. _"Eric,"_ he sighed, abruptly finding the strength to cradle the large cheek in his palm, _"it is not your fault, for I cannot feel you either."_

Blue eyes snapped up to meet his even as his child leaned instinctively into the gesture, and in them the elderly child saw a helplessness that nearly terrified him. He wanted to be terrified, if only so that Eric could feel him once again, so that _he_ could feel something once again.

Godric leaned forward until their faces were inches apart. _"I do not know why this rift between us has developed."_ He spoke just above a whisper, his thumb slowly tracing the angle of Eric's cheekbone, up and down, up and down, in the hopes of soothing him, and admitting this truth took a great deal of energy. _"Perhaps I am too old. Perhaps we have been so close for so long that that aspect of our bond shut down because we no longer need to feel each other's emotions to be a part of one-another, to survive."_

Perhaps the heaviness Godric had felt for the past months had closed off each of them from the other. But Eric would never understand that answer, and so the boy did not give it.

The berserker grasped the forearm attached to the hand caressing his face, his thumb stroking the skin in return through the fabric. _"We'll figure this out together. I promise you that."_

Godric summoned the sad smile once more, wondering if he actually heard the muscles in his cheeks shift with aching slowness as he did so, tilting Eric's chin downward and pressing his lips to the crown of the Viking's head. _"Your devotion has always been precious to me, and even though I don't deserve it, I thank you for it."_ His limbs shook as he struggled to keep himself from falling out of the chair. Out of all the physical and mental weights that had fallen upon him over two millennia—the support beams of houses, guilt thrown in his face by the memory of Master, crumbling statues, anxiety for his child—this endless despair was perhaps the heaviest, and it took every feeble ounce of strength he had left not to fall out of his chair...

"_You deserve it,"_ the Viking murmured, rising to his knees as he cupped the boy's waist in his hands and gently shifted him until his back met the chair's, resting their foreheads together. The vocal response was almost routine between them, though Godric had no doubt that each time Eric said it with as much sincerity as the last. The berserker's thumbs rubbed circles into his skin beneath his shirt. Would Godric even feel pleasure, feel _happy_, if they had sex again?

"_Tell Isabel you need to rest."_ Apparently Eric was wondering the same thing. _"We can sneak off to your rooms, and I can simply hold you, if that's what you want. We can try to figure out how to wake that part of the bond up again."_

But even the thought of attempting such a task made the exhaustion press in upon the boy closer than ever. He shook his head against his child. _"I'm needed here tonight. My underlings will want to keep an eye on me."_

"_Damn them,"_ Eric muttered.

_Yes,_ the boy thought, almost dreamily, _damn them, damn you, damn myself... Damn everything..._

_Now you understand._

Raised voices suddenly grated upon the old one's ears—accompanied by the _snap_ of fangs emerging in preparation for the kill.

"Take those words back, or they shall be your last!"

_No._

Godric lifted his head, gently brushing the Viking aside as he stood, something like a faint, possibly once-searing heat stirring within him. He greeted it like an old friend.

There would be no more violence in his house. Not tonight.

"We're leaving!"

"Go find someone else, you fucking bitch, you've lost this one!"

There was a cry of rage, the _crash_ of breaking glass, and Godric found himself among the crowd, fingers contracted around the throat of a vampire he did not know whose fangs were inches from a human girl's throat. Recognition stirred in him for the girl but not for her aggressor as he slowly pressed upward until the unknown vampire was standing at his eye level. His grip was not hard enough to bruise, but it was certainly hard enough to make his point, and slight noises of pain that he did not regret fell past her lips. "Retract... your... fangs. Now."

Facial muscles were manipulated as she immediately did as she was told, and the girl rushed into Eric's subordinate's arms as Godric forced the unknown vampire into a sitting position on the low couch before him. "I neither know, nor care, who you are. But in this Area, and certainly in this nest, I am the Authority. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sheriff." The unfamiliar woman's voice shook; she relaxed, gasping slightly, when he released her neck.

He gestured to the girl he had... _met_ in the basement. "This human has proven herself to be a courageous... and loyal friend to our kind." He stared down at the second being to attempt a near-fatal attack on her tonight. "And yet you treat her like a child does a dragonfly—pulling off wings for sport? No _wonder_ they hate us!"

The vampire glared up at him. "She provoked me."

Godric licked his lips to keep his own fangs in check as he leaned down and nearer to her to emphasize his next words. "And _you_ provoked _me_. You disrupted the peace in my own home. I could snap you like a twig." She swallowed, tensing, and for a moment he actually wanted to do it. But breaking her would only contradict his quest for peace. "Yet I haven't. Now, why is that?"

She searched his face before answering him. "It's... your choice."

He actually almost smiled. She, at least, understood that. "Indeed it is. You're an old vampire, I can tell. You've had hundreds of years to better yourself, yet you haven't." Just as quickly he wanted to snarl. "You are still a _savage_, and I fear for _all_ of us," he lifted his chin to emphasize his words, "humans... _and_ vampires... if this behavior persists."

He recalled who she had been arguing with and turned to the one under Eric's jurisdiction. "You." Her acquaintance stepped forward. "You seem to know her."

The dark-haired one's eyes dropped, and even as the mist crept in around Godric once again he recognized that the male vampire was ashamed of that knowledge. "Yes, Sheriff."

"Escort her from the nest."

"Go ahead," the girl told the one who had been fought over, "I'm fine."

Godric turned back to the invader of his home. She did not look at him, and seemed pathetic in her jealousy. "I wish you out of my Area before dawn."

She stood, and after a moment began trudging out of the house, her whole body shrinking away from him as though she expected to be attacked after all. Her companion nodded to him before following.

Godric's eyes passed over each member of his nest and Isabel's invitees as they turned to one another after a moment and resumed their conversations. Yes, the Spaniard would be the perfect Sheriff for them once he was gone.

Yes. It was time.

He turned to Eric—he knew the Viking too well for this festering wound in their bond to prevent him from knowing he would be right behind him, ready to fight with him if necessary—and opened his mouth to ask the berserker if he minded stepping outside with him, to perhaps take a walk—

"Godric?"

Isabel was at his other elbow, brows drawn together. "May I speak with you?"

The fog tried to brush her away, but the child struggled through it. "Yes. Of course." A glance passed between Maker and child, and as he followed his lieutenant back into the small room he heard Eric ask the victimized girl if she was all right.

Godric eased himself down into his chair, and Isabel crouched beside it. The boy wished he could have smiled at the symmetry between her position and Eric's of a few minutes before. But he didn't want to fight anymore.

She took a deep, shaking breath. "Thank you for the mercy you showed Hugo. What he did... It came as quite a shock, and yet I knew he was capable of such a thing."

The boy nodded, staring at his knees. "Eric has brought out such a reaction in me many times."

It was his turn to take a deep breath as he looked at his faithful subordinate. "You have been loyal to my cause over the decades we have spent together, and I appreciate that. You are the closest thing to a mother I have ever known, and now you must be a mother to your nestmates."

Isabel stared up at him, and as she opened her mouth—

"Excuse me, everyone!"

Her head rotated toward the sound of the alien voice—but hadn't Godric heard it once before as it passed by him in the basement of the church, calling out to Mr. Newlin that he and the Stackhouse boy would need more wood for the pyre that had so nearly been Godric's final death?

"If I could have your attention..."

Isabel walked to one of entryways between this room and the larger one, and the tired vampire forced himself to stand and slowly join her.

A dark young man in a black canvas jacket stood among the crowd—someone's human companion?

"My name is Luke McDonald," he continued. "I'm a member of the Fellowship of the Sun."

Out of the corner of his eye, Godric watched Stan rise from the couch on which he had been sitting, a growl rumbling in the back of his lieutenant's throat.

The human boy finished, "and I have a message for you all... from Reverend Steve Newlin."

The youth unzipped his jacket and pulled it open, revealing a tangle of silver and miniature stakes strapped to his chest... and in the midst of them, right over his heart, a large device that Godric instantly recognized as an explosive.

Godric could only stare. He had persuaded his underlings to withdraw from the church peacefully, and they chose to retaliate by sending a child to die?

But then that child pressed the button in his hand and the ageless boy was deafened as the world went dark.


	9. Ernest Neville

Godric was alive.

Their wavering connection appeared to have been thrown back into binding force by the explosion—it was the only explanation the Viking could presently think of—and through it Eric was weighted down by a heavy contrition unlike any he had ever felt... but the sorrow was not his. Cries of pain came from the humans and vampire surrounding him, but the ancient one's voice was not among them. Broken electrical cables hummed and flared, replacing the rubble and carnage surrounding the berserker with a blinding whiteness for a half a second before retreating again, the cycle repeating at slow intervals.

But Godric was _alive—Godric was ALIVE!_—

And if not for the two silver bullets in his neck and chest, Eric would have rushed to his Maker's side, just to be nearer to him and to see with his eyes that he was truly safe. The bullets' impact on his body was miniscule in comparison to the chains he had lain under in the church, but they had given him the ticket he needed to binding Sookie to his influence, and as long as Godric was in no danger Eric couldn't see any reason not to take advantage of their presence.

"Sookie!"

If he played his cards right, even Bill Compton wouldn't be able to stand between him and this unique young woman who was somehow more than human.

"SOOKIE!" Bill knelt beside them, holding the girl's hand from where she lay beneath the Viking, and the aftereffects of that terrible car crash flickered behind Eric's eyelids. But the concern the Southern vampire was probably feeling for Sookie was nothing in comparison to the concern Eric had felt, still felt, for his Maker.

"I covered her," the berserker explained himself when Compton looked at him. His voice was purposefully hoarse. "She—she's only stunned." He lifted his head as movement caught his eye: two boys dressed in Fellowship of the Sun paraphernalia, carrying crossbows, stared agape through the shattered outer walls of his father's house. His veins surged. "Get the humans." He wanted to kill them himself—every member of that church would die for what they had done, still might have done, to Godric—but if Bill didn't get out of here the Viking couldn't make his move.

Compton sped off, and the children screamed and fled before his pathetic vampirism.

Godric was walking now, probably aiding his lieutenants in taking stock of the damage done to his nestmates, and the sounds of his wonderfully familiar and _very alive _footsteps were better than music from Eric's human years.

After a few seconds Sookie began to worm her way out from under the Viking. "I can't... breathe—you weigh a... _ton_." She pushed him off of her; he allowed his body to flop over onto the floor as she got to her feet. "Jason?" Her eyes were wide as she turned her head, searching. "Jason?"

"I'm okay." The response was quiet even to Eric's ears; the Stackhouse boy had been more than likely winded, if not knocked into the next room.

Eric groaned softly and Sookie looked back at him. She knelt at his side; a quick scan when her back was turned had told him he looked much worse than he felt. Her eyes lit on his neck and chest. "Uh-oh."

"Had to shield you." His voice had been stronger when he was silvered at the church, but he doubted she was in a state right now that would allow her to make that sort of comparison.

"Well, hurry up and heal yourself—what're you waitin' for?"

"Can't... S-silver..."

"I'll go get Godric."

He grabbed her arm as she started to rise. Attractive though she was, he would have actually preferred the feeling of his Maker's cool lips on his skin, but that would not have served his purpose. "No time. S-suck it... out..."

Her brow furrowed as she scanned him again. "Eric, I can't! It's... too gross and it's... _you!_"

Compton would be back any second. "I'm... dying..." He allowed the breath to funnel away from his body as his arm dropped to the ground. _Come on._

A noise of frustrated disgust crackled from her throat, and Eric knew he had her. "Son of a mother..." She used him as leverage and threw herself over to his other side, closer to his neck, and lowered herself to the wound. Her sucks were noisy and sloppy; more blood was probably trickling down his neck than she was actually swallowing, but a few drops were all it would take... She lifted herself after a few seconds; there was the _ping!_ of metal on metal as she spat. "Got it!"

There was a copious amount of blood on her chin. But he had to be certain... "Another one..."

"You're kidding me!" She pulled down the neckline of his shirt, grimacing, and began to suck on the second wound, harder. He lifted his head, watching her for a moment, and allowed a smile to cross his features as he propped up his brilliantly overlarge cranium with his arm. His stomach twisted with her revulsion.

She was his.

"Who is dead?" His Maker's voice was carried to him from across the room; his Maker's resentment came with it.

Isabel's voice answered it. "Stan—" _Thank the gods_ "—Powell, Katherine... two human companions." _And definitely the kid who blew the house to hell._

"What are you doing?" Compton had returned... and the fury on his face could not have been more beautiful.

Sookie spat out the second bullet and sat back on her heels as she turned to him. "I sucked silver out of Eric's chest and saved his life even though I _really_ didn't want to." The words came out in a breathless rush. Many humans had also been made breathless by him... and the two vampires he was closest to in the world had lost their breath to him many times.

"She was _superb_." He smirked up at Bill; job done, he was allowed to gloat as freely as he wanted—even better if she saw him do it.

Compton's eyes shifting from side to side. He turned slightly away from Sookie as he revealed her mistake: "Eric was in no danger."

"He—what?"

Eric's smile broadened. "A tiny falsehood." His wonderful, melodious voice was back to normal.

"He was already healing." Bill was now looking slightly sick. "The bullets would've pushed themselves out."

Sookie looked from him to Eric, and the Viking could feel her confusion.

"This way, he's... forced you to drink his blood," Compton continued, and her brow smoothed out as the meaning behind what she had done evidently came to her.

"No!" She shook her head. "No, _no!_"

"He'll be able to sense your emotions."

Sookie glared at the Viking. "You big, lying a-hole!"

"Bill, you're right, I believe I can sense her emotions."

She slammed the side of her fist into Eric's stomach—he smirked at the _thud_ding lack of resistance in his defined muscles—before rising and pressing herself against Bill; he wrapped his arms around her.

"Sweet," Eric remarked at their publicly affectionate posturing.

She glared at him. "I'll never do anythin' for you again—monster!"

"It's not your fault," Bill crooned to her as she turned into his shoulder. He too glared at the Viking.

Fine. If Compton wanted a fight, then they would brawl, and Compton would lose. Badly.

The berserker only wished he could have done the same to Stan.

Eric stood at the full extent of his miraculous speed, brushing debris from his arms. "Think I'm gonna cry."

"Everyone, please!" Eric turned his head at Isabel's call for her attention, his eyes on his Maker as the elder vampire walked up to stand beside her. The ageless child was dotted with blood and flakes of drywall; Eric sent a quick prayer to Eir to thank her for healing any minor wounds Godric might have acquired.

"Hey—y'all listen up!" Since when had the Stackhouse kid become the poster-boy for hearing what a _vampire_ had to say? The idea surprisingly stank of Compton—perhaps Bill had finally overcome that irrational homophobia of his and fucked Jason while the Viking was tending to Godric? Or perhaps the Stackhouse boy had been the dominate one—an interesting image...

"They may come back." The quiet cadences of his Maker's accent brought him to the front and center of Eric's attentions. "Go to the Hotel Carmilla. They've been alerted—" Isabel pulled out her cell and began dialing as she left the room "—security is in place." Breath left his Maker in one brief gust as he finished speaking, and Eric felt his own shoulders bow forward slightly as he watched the action perform itself out on the little body, as if addressing the living that were present had exhausted the old vampire.

Eric watched Godric watch his nestmates and guests leave his home, and every inch of their bond and of that small face screamed _mea culpa, mitt fel, Meine schuld._

_My fault._

The Viking had felt a similar groaning responsibility from his creator before—Godric's Maker had impressed upon the slave boy many terrible things—but not like this.

Eric stepped toward his father as the last person left the house, and as they stared at one-another across the ruinous gulf the Viking was struck with a terrible sense of foreboding.

He watched Godric take one last look around his broken home before moving towards the front door—and Eric blurred to his side before he was across the room.

"Godric." The name was terribly hoarse, and this time the Viking's swollen throat was not faking it.

The boy turned to him, gaze blank, and Eric folded his Maker in his arms, pressing his face into short, gritty hair as he murmured his creator's name over and over with the accent of his native tongue. The small body slumped into his chest without resistance, and the sigh he heard tumble past Godric's lips was like the sighs slipping past the slack white lips of the newly dead.

But Godric wasn't dying. He couldn't be. One didn't just _die_ of guilt.

Did they?

The Viking lifted his head, eyes squeezed shut, and rocked the child gently. The elder vampire's name had become a litany; Eric barely registered that he was still saying it.

"_Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric Godric__..."_

Suffocating desperation. He wanted it to consume him. If, and only if, Godric was dead then he would die too, and gladly.

But Godric wasn't dead. He couldn't be.

"_Hush, little one."_

The words were uttered dully, but as Eric looked down at Godric and Godric looked up at him, they might have been said with all the enthusiasm in the world, for they meant just as much to the berserker in any form. Sense returned to him as a dot of concern that was not his own settled down into his chest. Nothing could destroy Godric. He was too old. It simply wasn't possible anymore. He could be hurt—gods, how he could be hurt—but he could not be destroyed.

The boy who would always live slipped from his arms. Eric straightened and followed him as he went out among those who had not yet left for the hotel: Isabel, Sookie, Bill, and Jason, their eyes on the oldest vampire present whose eyes were on the ground at his feet. Eric felt a sense of déjà vu settle on his shoulders.

"Are you ready to go?" Bill had addressed Godric as though the ageless boy were some half-deaf old human with pre-Alzheimer's who tended to piss himself, and Eric wanted to break his jaw. He stepped forward, intending to make sure that Compton knew his quarrel was with him, _not_ the elderly child—and Isabel stepped forward too. Her eyes met his, and instantly he understood the intention behind her gaze: _Look at your Maker. Can't you see he can't handle any more violence tonight?_

Godric's head was lowered, his gaze on the ground, and the bond bled with _mea culpa, mitt fel, Meine schuld_.

No, his elder would not recover from this potent remorse if he attacked Bill. The Viking reluctantly stepped back beside his Maker.

Isabel turned to her Sheriff. "I packed some things for you." She handed Godric a faded white sea bag with

**NEVILLE E.  
****U.S.N.  
****529**

stamped on the carrying strap.

Five. Two. Nine.

Five... Two...

_No. Focus something else—anything else._

His eyes lit on the bird in flight on Jason's shirt, between the words _BON TEMPS_ and _FOOTBALL_.

The eagle claw was a tiny, soothing weight against his chest, and the Viking remained in the present time.

"... weren't damaged," Isabel was saying, "but I wasn't sure what else you might want, and you didn't seem as if you were in a condition to—"

Godric snickered. It was a quiet sound, eerily hollow and entirely inappropriate, and a chill rapidly ascended the berserker's spine when he heard it.

Eric felt the others' eyes on the boy; he too watched the old one stare at the ground.

What had been _done_ to Godric?

Several seconds passed in silence.

"_Are_ you ready to go?" Sookie this time, her voice gentle and sincere...

And after a gradual pause, the ancient one nodded.

"You may take Stan's truck," Isabel said as she turned to Jason, indicating one of two vehicles left in the driveway. She tossed him the keys, and the faint ringing sound they made when they shuffled together was muffled when he caught them. "He probably would not like for you to drive it, but he... isn't able to argue against the idea anymore." She blinked, looking away; bizarrely, she seemed close to tears.

"Uh... thanks, I guess." The Stackhouse boy blinked at her before turning to his sister. "Uh, Sook, did you wanna—"

"Yes, that'll be great." She was staring at Godric, brows drawn together, and something twisted in the Viking's gut as he watched his once-powerful creator continue to stare through the concrete beneath him. Godric possessed the curiosity of one far younger than his physical self, had possessed it probably long before Eric knew him and was something the berserker was quite used to, but there was no curiosity in the old vampire's gaze now. Now, his gaze was as distant as when Stan had hinted to Isabel that Hugo had betrayed them... and his self-resentment was as burdensome to the Viking as ever.

The Viking watched for a moment as Sookie followed her brother to the truck, Bill's arm around her waist—he glared immaturely at Eric over his shoulder—then turned and followed Isabel and Godric to the remaining car, a green Ford Taurus. Isabel and Godric placed their bags in the trunk, and Eric wished Godric would have allowed him to carry his belongings for him but knew he never would. The berserker sat with his Maker in the backseat, as before—and flinched when his elder slumped sideways like an overbalanced rag doll, his small face pressing into Eric's shoulder. But in the bond nothing had changed, and Isabel started the car after her widened eyes met Eric's in the review mirror and he told her with a glance that her Sheriff was as close to all right as he had been a few moments before.

The drive to the hotel was very quiet—the car was certainly much softer when it ran than Stan's ridiculous clunker. Eric stroked Godric's hip with the back of his index finger in small, slow movements that he knew Isabel's focus on the road wouldn't permit her to see, whispering soothing phrases in Swedish softly enough so only he and Godric would be able to hear him: _"That's it, Godric... Just relax... I'll help you find a new house, a better one, if this one can't be repaired... You can stay with Pam and me, in the meantime, if you want... It's all right... I'm here..."_ The small body did not move each time headlights passed their vehicle by, but Eric's jaw still clenched against the memory of the boy's screams.

And then they were at last in the building, the ancient one's eyes wide as though to welcome in the unnatural brightness in the foyer, and the Viking wondered wh—

_Godric, don't punish yourself over this. It's stupid. Yes, vampires were killed, but _you_ didn't blow half of your own house apart trying to accomplish that, and the guy who did is already dead. It's over and done with. Just clean up and move on, like we always have, and stop burning your fucking retinas._

_I'm sorry, that—that was out of line. Godric, just... don't do that._

_Please don't do that._

_Please._

But Eric couldn't speak those words to an audience wider than the ageless boy, and right now the lobby was packed with security personnel and healing nestmates.

"I can make sure everyone has a place to stay, if you'd like to rest." Isabel was speaking to Godric now; at least his eyes had returned to the floor. "Just let me request a room for you—"

"He'll be staying with me," Eric interrupted. He would have thought this obvious. But these self-absorbed Texans didn't know his Maker like he did.

Isabel looked at Godric, and Godric nodded, pulling the strap of his bag—_Think of the abbey, think of the abbey—_over his shoulder with aching slowness.

The walk to the elevators was as silent as the one to Eric's rooms, broken only by a quiet _snick_ as the Viking locked the door behind them. The boy stood in the middle of the room, his back to the berserker, his eyes presumably still staring through the ground in front of him. Godric was a quiet being, but not this quiet, and that silence was suddenly very heavy...

"_Or,"_ the Viking continued his monologue from the car as the idea took hold of him, walking around to stand before his creator, _"you could stay here until a new house is found. I'd be happy to pay for the room. Do you like it?"_

Godric blinked at the carpet.

Slowly, Eric curled a finger under his Maker's chin and lifted it, his eyes searching the young face. He was terribly aware of the way his nearly-blocked throat bobbed when he swallowed. _"You know that suicide bomber wasn't your fault. You didn't do anything to hurt them, so their retaliation was not of your doing. It isn't your fault."_

But when gray irises were finally revealed to him, all he saw was _mea culpa, mitt fel, Meine schuld,_ and the Viking shuddered with it.

But standing here all night would only worsen the child's self-induced suffering. _"Bath time,"_ the berserker said abruptly, and the false cheerfulness in his own voice was grating. _"Get nice and clean... a good day's rest... you'll feel better tomorrow evening."_

Eric stripped completely, lying the claw pendant on the nightstand with reverence before entering the bathroom and turning on the shower. He fiddled with the knobs and turned to ask his elder if he thought the water was hot enough so he could adjust it before they got under the spray—

But Godric wasn't there, and a jolt shot through the Viking as he blurred back into the main room to find his Maker lying bonelessly on his stomach on the floor, sack of belongings beside him, gray eyes staring at nothing.

Never, in over a thousand years, had the berserker seen Godric like this, so... lethargic.

So indifferent.

Was his guilt weighing him down so much that he just didn't _care_ what happened to him—whether he stood or fell—that he didn't care that he wasn't showing Eric the image of a strong father that the Viking had always seen in him, even in his weakest moments, seen in him until now?

Eric blinked rapidly as warmth stung his eyes. _"Godric, please... I don't know what you need, what to do... I don't know how to cope with this._"

There was no response.

The Viking supposed he deserved it, because admitting weakness was death... but not for Godric. No, never for Godric.

After a while Eric straightened, squaring his shoulders. There was one thing he _could_ do for the one who meant more to him than even Pam did, and that was to become his father. _"Okay, Godric,"_ he murmured as he knelt beside the boy, slowly coaxing the limp body into a sitting position. _"Everything's fine. We're fine. I'm here."_ He persisted in his crooning as he undressed the old one, thinking of the work of a mortician all the while. The limbs he manipulated were terribly heavy, flopping to the ground if he wasn't careful to ensure they didn't become untangled from the material too suddenly, and the Viking winced whenever they slipped from his hands and hit the floor.

Eric stared at what he had revealed. After a thousand years of bathing beside and making love to Godric, the only one who knew his Maker's body better than he did was the ageless boy himself, and the changes in it were immediately apparent to him.

And what drastic changes they were.

Compared to even earlier tonight, Godric's skin was far paler than what the Viking had become accustomed to—paler than the moon itself, and the berserker would have never before thought that possible. Even the blue of his veins was very faint. The brown of hair and eyebrows, the gray of his irises, the darkness of the needled ink, the sharp red lining his eyelids and nails and forming the brand on his shoulder: these were the only colors left on the ancient body. Everything else that might have once held color was completely white.

And white was not red.

Eric forced his fangs to drop and opened his own wrist as the cure came to him, holding it to the ancient boy's lips. _"Come on, Godric. Drink."_

Blood ran over Godric's mouth and down his chin; the berserker didn't feel any of it enter the small body.

Even Godric's instruments of Death remained hidden.

"_Godric, this isn't the way to mourn those you lost. You need blood. Drink."_

Nothing.

The Viking's cry echoed on the walls, _"Drink, Odin DAMN YOU!"_

Nothing.

Eric closed his eyes as he retracted his fangs. _"Godric, I... I'm sorry, that wasn't... I didn't mean it, not to you... Never to you..."_ He cradled the small form to his chest, rocking slightly, strangely almost wanting to weep. But to be Godric's father, he could not.

Swallowing, the Viking stood behind the elderly child, grasping the undersides of the small biceps, and gritted his teeth when he was forced to struggle to lift his creator. Eric had once possessed the strength of thousands of human men... When Godric was at last to his feet, Eric's fingers slipped from the child as he turned to walk into the bathroom—

And Godric crumpled to the floor, and the only pain in the bond was that damnable despair and the compression in Eric's chest as he stared down at his helpless creator and cursed his own stupidity.

What had those zealots _done_ to Godric? For they must have done something. The Viking hadn't believed his savior for a second when he had said no one from the Fellowship had harmed him, and it was a very rare occasion indeed when he did not see every word that came out of the ancient one's mouth as the absolute truth.

The Viking grimly lifted the child to his feet once more, securing the small body against his with an arm around his waist. _"All right, Godric. It's all right. I'll help you."_ He half-carried his Maker into the bathroom—small feet dragged on the ground, catching on the doorframe, and Eric slowly moved them to a clear path—and under the water. The pressure reminded him of the bath in Godric's nest... He extended the tendrils... but he was forced back along the spider strands to his own side of their bond by a pain that was apparently more powerful than their need for each other.

Eric swallowed and closed Godric's eyelids with his fingertips; he couldn't look at the emptiness behind them and function for two bodies at the same time. He began washing the boy, one hand still cradling the small body to his so Godric wouldn't collapse again. He kept to the pattern he had used in Godric's tub: arms, neck, shoulders, face, hair, chest, abdomen, legs, groin, brand, back... Suds trickled down these areas to dissipate in the slowly reddening water flowing into the drain, and Eric stared, fascinated.

The destruction was... beautiful...

_No._ Godric needed him. He needed to pull the boy out of this watery grave, not join him in it.

But everything was so heavy... so... very...

Eric gradually maneuvered his creator into a sitting position in the corner, tilting Godric's head back against the wall and his chin away from the frantic rush of liquid, and their legs pressed together in the small space. The Viking swayed slightly when they separated, and rested a hand against the wall to brace himself. One eye was on the child the entire time he washed himself, watching the water bead on the sickly epidermis as he cleaned himself with the same pattern, but for his lack of brand, that he had used on his Maker. His hands slipped from his own skin more than made contact with it.

The Viking shut off the faucets after he had finished and dried himself off in increments.

He collected a fresh towel and collapse more than knelt beside Godric, slowly patting him dry with the same sequence as the cleansing process. His limbs shook as picked the boy up; he stumbled as he carried him to the bed. He laid him as tenderly as he was able on the dark sheets before curling himself around the smaller figure, large limbs embracing little ones as his torso met the small, knobbed spine.

Godric hadn't even opened his eyes on his own, and Eric didn't have the strength anymore to keep his eyes from closing too.

Dawn was only another weight to carry on his shoulders.

* * *

Eric opened his eyes to a large bedchamber in a large house; his gaze was immediately drawn to Godric, sitting on the edge of their bed, watching him, dressed in blue officer's wool... and in the corner nearest him was a white sea bag.

**NEVILLE E.  
****U.S.N.  
****529**

Five. Two. Nine.

Five... Two... Nine...

_No. Not again. Not today. Please. Not today._

Immersed in the loss in Godric's eyes and in their bond, Eric sat up against his will and joined his Maker on the edge of the bed. They stared at one-another.

"_It's tonight, isn't it?"_ The Viking's throat was suddenly very thick. In nearly a thousand years, they had never been parted for longer than a week. _"You have to go tonight."_

His creator nodded, _"I'm afraid so. My new underlings are half a world away from England; it isn't sensible for me to remain here."_ A small hand reached up, slipping through his hair from brow to nape of neck in one smooth stroke. _"Please don't be angry with me. I could never forgive myself if I left with such a rift between us."_

Something deep in Eric's chest shriveled as he shook his head. _"I won't be. Just don't let me go."_ The request fell from his lips with the blood from his eyes before he could stop either of them. _"Please, Godric, do not release me!"_ His arms came tight around the small torso as he buried his face into the crook between his Maker's neck and shoulder; he felt the red rivers smear on the soft skin as one little arm returned the embrace.

"_Shhh, Eric... Shhh..."_ The familiar pressure of a tiny hand gradually ascended the back of his neck to tangle little fingers in his hair. He knew from the angles of bone that Godric's cheek was rested to the left of the crown of his head.

There was an eon of quiet...

"_You are my child,"_ Godric began at last, and Eric sobbed aloud, once. _"I saw many pieces of myself in you that night on the battlefield, and selfishness is one that still lingers. Though we must now live apart, my blood will forever be in you, if ever you need me. I will always be your father, your brother, and your son, as you will always be for me. For nearly a thousand years, we have been two pairs of legs walking in step, two minds thinking one-another's thoughts, two sets of lungs breathing each other's breaths to speak each other's words. Nothing will ever change that."_

A choked sound emerged from the Viking as the blood continued to flow.

"_My dear, loyal child... I will always need you. I don't know if I could ever let you go, even if you asked me to."_

"_I would never ask that of you."_ The compression eased only slightly, but Eric lifted his head anyway, struggling to to show his Maker that he was not weak... only to watch a lone crimson tear leave a crimson track down Godric's cheek.

"_I'm sorry."_ A smile twitched onto the boy's face before falling away with the scarlet drop. _"A soldier should never be at the mercy of his emotions."_

The berserker nodded mutely at the old adage, and their arms tightened about one-another as they kissed the red from each other's skin.

"_I love you above all others. Always."_ Cool lips shaped the words against his.

"_And I... you."_ The admittance came with the expected coarseness, and he kissed his Maker to soothe it. He knew the warmth that flowed through him at the exchange belonged to both of them.

They parted slowly, arms and hands and fingers slipping from each other inch by terrible inch. He allowed his Maker to help him dress, basking in the caresses of small fingers, though he thought neither of them could ever move slowly enough.

Godric retrieved his bag, donned his visor cap, and looked up at Eric as Eric looked down at him.

Godric sighed. _"If I don't leave now, I will never go."_

_Then don't leave, _Eric wanted to say. But the soldier Godric had taught him to be, the soldier Godric had always been, would not let him.

"_Say goodbye to Pam for me when she wakes."_

The Viking nodded. _"I will."_

The civilian and the wounded sailor returning home from service in Britain walked through the house together, their journey far too brief, and stood close together on the front lawn, their gazes locked.

"_I am proud to be yours."_ Eric leaned down and pressed his lips to his elder's one last time.

"_And I am proud to have you,"_ Godric said when they reluctantly drew back.

The boy sighed, hefting the bag higher onto his shoulder. _"Goodbye, Eric."_

"_G..."_ The Viking choked on the words; he took a deep breath, swallowed. _"Goodbye, Godric."_

His Maker reached up and stroked his cheek...

Godric turned away after a long moment, and walked at human pace up the lane; a slight limp now disrupted his once-smooth, powerful gait.

Eric watched him until distance and blood tears prevented him from seeing any more.

* * *

_Author's Note: Just for confirmation, at the end of the chapter Eric was dreaming about the night he and Godric separated, as mentioned in "The Siren Song."_

_Before most people in the U.S. began getting a Social Security Number like they do now, in the military Service Numbers were issued as a form of identification along with the soldier's or sailor's name, which is the number on Godric's sea bag. The first Service Numbers were issued to officers around 1920, but I've played with history a bit here to have them issued in 1915 to comply what Pam's narrations mention in "The Siren Song." I was never really able to find out for certain in what order the number and name should go on one's sea bag during the first World War, or even if they were stamped on the bags back then—though it wasn't for lack of trying—so I apologize for any inaccuracies in that field._


	10. Revealing Vietnam

Godric stepped slowly through the rice field, heel to gradual, gradual toe in the water circling his lower calves, never resting his full weight on a new patch of submerged earth until his senses and his intuition told him there were no strips of trigger wire or explosives beneath him (regrowing one's foot was not a pleasant experience). He had been in Vietnam before, done these step-pause maneuvers in many countries and many wars over the past century, and so he was not surprised to find himself dressed in the greens of a U.S. Army Lieutenant that he had worn while he was in the Service there. He was not surprised even to discover he was carrying no weapon or pack on his back for camouflaging himself among humans.

He had been in Vietnam before.

He was also far from surprised to find that it was raining heavily. At least there was no wind to render the visor on his weighted helmet useless.

There was no wind, but between the large frequent drops he could see that he was surrounded by bodies, leading to the horizon on either side of a cleared path just wide enough for two men walking five paces apart. He did not need to inspect them more closely to see that they were dead, in various maimed and/or drained states, nor to see that they had all been his victims, whether from hunger or fury, at some point in his long life.

He had been in Vietnam before.

Left. Right. Left. R—

He became aware of a presence beside him, and in his peripheral vision saw Eric, five paces to his right, long legs matching exactly the lengths of his shorter strides with care and patience. As expected, his child was dressed according to a rank a few levels below his own. He thought of the dead to either side of them, of many white hands pulling them down together into the depths of his guilt. _"You shouldn't be here."_

True to form, the Viking ignored the dismissal. _"The rain here is worse than in Louisiana. You were right: Vietnam _is_ depressing."_

Godric managed a smile more easily than he thought he might once have, glancing at his child between cautious steps. _"The letter you received was actually the second draft. I hadn't had much to say the first time around, and regardless that one had been soak—"_ He did a double-take and saw, for the first time, the streaks of dried blood on his Viking's face. _"What happened?"_

Pain swept across the ancient child's chest. The berserker blinked three times in rapid succession, looking away, and said quietly, _"Ernest Neville."_

This time the crushing spasm belonged directly to both of them. Of course his personal purgatory would affect Eric's dreams. _"I _am_ sorry, my child. I did not want to leave you."_

Eric returned his gaze. _"I know."_

Left. Right. Left. Right.

After a while, recognition began stirring in Godric's veins, and he stopped and stared with Eric at a monk lying sprawled on the ground. The body's eyes were open, staring, glassy. The shapes in the face were far too basic and typical for the ageless boy to recall exactly who the body had once been—a face just like many other human faces here—but after a few seconds he felt the weight of a claw pendant against his chest as their bond provided the answer.

"_Is every creature whose life you've ever taken here?"_

Godric might have once been proud at his Viking's show of insight. Now, it merely made him tired, and he closed his eyes. _"I don't know. I've never reached the end."_

There was a rush of air, but the boy did not realize the berserker had blurred to stand before him until a quiet _"Godric"_ forced him to look up at a pair of blue irises dark with a pain that was probably much stronger for Eric right now than it was for him.

The ancient vampire nearly asked Eric if the risk of maiming himself that he had just taken was worth it if it meant he could be closer to his Maker. But there was a great part of Godric that did not wish to know the answer to that, and so he remained silent.

His gaze drifted and eventually found its way through the mire they were standing in to discover a fragmentation grenade lying on the ground between his and Eric's feet. He stared at it, wondering not where it had come from but why the safety pin hadn't been pulled.

He desperately wanted it to have been pulled, for at this point even a second of dream-death was a relief.

There was a jolting sensation in the pit of his stomach, and he felt the Viking's blood race: Eric's gaze must have followed his, and now they were viewing the same object with two different outlooks. This had not been an unusual occurrence during their centuries together, but before he had always shared Eric's reaction to weapons they could not control.

But the ageless boy could control this one—could control two weapons here, if he chose to consider his child as one.

But could the immortal child control himself?

Godric continued to stare at the explosive... and then, just for a second, the surge fell away, muffled by a sensation he had not felt in years. It was like a blanket around his shoulders, suppressing the emotions of even his own child so that he might view the situation with clarity.

It was tranquility, peacefulness, serenity.

It was calm.

And the ancient one hungered for it.

"_Eric, step away."_ Godric's eyes had not left the oblong sphere between them.

"_What are y—at least let me disassemble it before you examine it. If it blows up in your face, you'll take longer than me to he—"_

"_As your Maker I command you."_

Only the tiniest piece of the back of his mind wondered whether the cracking sensation that had just taken place in his chest had occurred because he had commanded the Viking after centuries of trust without the use of that power or because the tone of his voice had finally betrayed his eagerness to die. A second miniscule piece heard Eric slowly back up exactly two paces; another registered that it was still raining.

Godric gradually lowered himself into a crouch; he picked up the explosive with the same careful pace. He supposed a human might have termed the wet metal cold (there wasn't much that didn't feel warm to Godric anymore). He fingered the groove circling the middle of the lemon shape that was the main body of the grenade before pinching a metal ring attached to the top between his fingers.

There it was again.

Calm.

Godric was not looking at his child when he pulled the pin.

* * *

When the ancient vampire woke, a plan had formed in his mind, and the calm was still there.

He would sludge through the tedium of the paperwork and such that would be expected of him after the suicide bomber's attack. He would ensure that Isabel would be his replacement as Sheriff of his Area. He would privately inform Eric of his intentions and give him whatever comfort he was able to give (this would take a great deal more energy than the previous steps, and although the calm had made him much stronger than he had been before dawn last night, he had only ever been able to take so much of his child's pain). And then he would go find a quiet, high place and wait for the sun to rise.

Such a beautiful ending. Godric knew he didn't deserve it. But soon no one would be able to stop him from taking it.

He became aware that Eric's limbs were about him, and there was a great deal of familiarity in the display of need and devotion that his child had shown him for centuries. Eric had been so good to him last night, so patient, even though he couldn't have truly understood just how far into the fog Godric had been lost following the explosion. The Viking had certainly been affected by it, the old one had heard and seen and felt that, but his and his child's exhaustion could never be the same again.

Carefully, Godric turned over in Eric's arms until he was facing him, reaching up with one hand to gradually run his fingers repeatedly through the Viking's hair, from his brow to the nape of his neck. The temporary death that was sleep for a vampire had often unnerved Godric when his child was new, the sight of Eric caught in it often inducing an irrational panic that the berserker wouldn't rise to walk with him through another night of darkness, but now he was long used to it. The Viking was so peaceful when he slept, without any trace of anger or assertiveness, and Godric liked to see this expression on his child's face even though Eric himself probably would not. He ran his gaze down Eric's unmoving form, re-familiarizing himself with every crease and definition of muscle in his child's body with his eyes, as their intimacy the previous evening had enabled him to do so with his own body... Master's memory ran his fingers down Godric's form in turn, smug as he told him how shameful the boy was being, how greedy, and Godric reduced his observations to fleeting glances in order to drive away the heaviness that had ever-so-slightly begun to intersperse itself with the serenity he had been feeling when he woke.

He gave up after a short while, the weight pressing down on him once more, wriggling out from his child's embrace and crouching beside his sea bag. The memory of the night he left Eric and Pam to live on their own filled his thoughts as he opened the top, and he paused, closing his eyes wearily, before continuing. He pulled on the change of loose, white clothes he found inside without a second thought, cocking his head to one side when he realized the bag had not deflated completely when he released it for the final time. He peered into it again—

Eric's and Pam's letters to him, hastily bound together with rubber bands, probably about a third of a drawer's worth each per sheaf. He did not need to leaf through them to know that each and every page of their long correspondence would be there.

Godric blinked, remembering that his house had not been locked when they left. He couldn't see anyone wanting to steal a bunch of papers holding no monetary value, but he knew better than anyone that even when someone was in their right mind, they could still treasure things that would do nothing to help them survive. He had been enshrouded in a very thick fog by the end of last night, but he still knew Isabel well enough to know that a useless memento or two of her own might have been packed among her own things after she collected Godric's.

He settled the bag back onto the floor as the mattress creaked, and he looked up to see Eric sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. The ancient vampire remained silent: it was not necessary to make excuses for his behavior to his child.

The berserker's eyes searched his. _"You're feeling better."_

Godric nodded the smallest fraction. _Better_, after all, was not _well_. He stood, and might have once been amused at how Eric was forced to look up at him instead of the other way around. _"You should dress."_

The command had not been in his voice then, yet Eric immediately rose to his feet. _"Yes, Godric."_ There was the faintest sensation of warmth coming to the ageless boy through their bond. Of course, after last night, the Viking would be especially happy to see his Maker once more give the orders, as the order of their world had once been, as the berserker would still feel it should be.

Godric stared at a featureless spot on the far wall, not permitting himself to watch Eric slip on his clothes. He only looked at him when he felt his presence at his shoulder, and was not surprised to find that he was wearing black. He turned to his child, slowly, and ran his fingers down the section of the sleeve covering Eric's bicep: resilient darkness masking hard muscle infused with a complex system of veins. _"I like this shirt."_ Meeting his child's eyes now would take too much effort, and in any case he did not want to look away from the soft material so close to the color of death. _"It suits you."_

He could practically hear Eric's grin. _"I'll make a note to wear it more often around you, then."_

Godric had nothing to say to that. What _could_ he say? He couldn't tell Eric of his intentions, not yet. The Viking would only interfere with his every step all night if he did, becoming a hindrance rather than a help in soothing the fears of Godric's nestmates and placating the dreaded press.

The ancient one felt Eric's index finger lift his chin, and he braced himself for his child's questions—but he was also not surprised to feel the berserker capture his mouth instead of making an inquiry. He relaxed automatically as the Viking's arms came about him, returning the passes of Eric's tongue even as he realized that even though the berserker would never agree to killing him, Eric was still a creature of Death, and the calm was returning—

But Master pressed the fog down onto Godric's face, suffocating him, and the old one turned his head away from affection.

He did not look at Eric when a secondary flash of pain joined his regret.

* * *

"Do you have any fucking idea of the PR mess you've made?"

Nan Flanagan. Godric had seen her speaking on the... _television_ to promote vampire rights, and he had once wished to meet her, to discuss her efforts at achieving peace between the human and vampire species. Now, however...

"And who has to fucking clean that shit up? Me. Not you. _Me."_ She looked around at them all: the ageless boy, Isabel, Eric, the girl, Eric's subject. "I should drain every one of you bastards."

She was glaring at Eric now, as if the actions of the Fellowship of the Sun were all the Viking's fault.

_There is no need to punish the others. _I_ provoked the Fellowship—they went into my house to end _me_, because I wanted them to in the first place. The bombing was _my fault_. Look at _me.

But Eric, glowering back at her, didn't give him the chance to say anything. "Stan left for the church on his own. None of us knew anything about it."

It did not surprise Godric that the berserker would attempt to protect his creator's subordinates as well as his own. They had often tried to carry one-another's burdens over their centuries, and the old Maker had not expected Eric to discontinue that—even now, when the remorse carried so much weight that he couldn't bear to sit close beside his child, much less look him in the eye.

"Oh really? Because everyone who met Stan in the last _three hundred years_ knew that he had a kink about slaughtering humans. But you, his nestmates, his _Sheriff_, had no clue?"

"And how were we supposed to know that this time he meant it?" Isabel retorted from his side. This was true: Stan had boasted outright to him and to Isabel about his desire to attack the Fellowship, and often.

"Not my problem," Flanagan's parry of the question slid smoothly into an attack as he felt without the connection of blood that she was looking at him. "Yours."

Heat flared in his veins: Eric. "Don't talk to him that way."

"Don't talk to _me_ that way." Flanagan's voice was calm, confident—rather like Eric's voice usually was. "Let's get to the point." She was looking at Godric again, and because she was not his child it was slightly easier for him to return her gaze. "How'd they manage to abduct you?"

He had almost effortlessly avoided the truth with his nestmates, with Stan, Isabel and even Eric, but he was too tired to do so any longer. "They would've taken one of us sooner or later. I offered myself."

A cold, tightening sensation began to spread through his core as he felt through their bond that the berserker was gazing at him. He would not have preferred that his child find out this way, especially because he knew his Viking well enough to know that wanting to take his own life would never have been something Eric would consider as a possible reason for Godric's disappearance.

"Why?" Flanagan again.

Her inability to understand did not concern him nearly as much as Eric's did. "Why not?"

"They wanted you to _meet the sun_ and you were _willing?_"

A terrible spasming sensation, deep within his chest. The last time he had felt that impression this strongly from his child was when they had separated, so long ago. But the fog helped him resist it. The fog, in fact, was beginning to look more and more welcoming by the second...

But Godric's eyes were still on the spokeswoman. "What do you think?"

"I think you're out of your mind. And then I hear about a traitor?"

"Irrelevant," Godric said immediately. Isabel would soon have enough to deal with without taking the blame for her human. "Only a rumor. I'll take full responsibility."

"You bet you will."

"You cold bitch." Eric once again. Godric was almost relieved that the heat of his suppressed anger was slowly subduing the pain of the knowledge the ancient boy had imparted to him.

"Listen," Flanagan began again, to the berserker this time, "this is a national vampire disaster, and nobody at the top has any sympathy for any of you." She looked to Godric again. "Sheriff, you've fucked up: you're fired."

He nodded. "I agree. Of course." He indicated his remaining lieutenant. "Isabel should take over—she had no part in my disgrace."

He did not need to look at his underling to see that she disagreed with him: everything was in her voice. "Godric, _fight back."_

"What are you saying—she—she's a _bureaucrat!_ You don't have to take shit from her!"

Godric looked at his child for the first time since they had been alone together. The agony of his passing was already deeply imbedded in Eric's eyes. The ageless boy hoped Pam would be able to dig it out in his place.

"You want to lose your Area, Viking?" Flanagan, so certain, like much of the world, that so much could be solved with a simple demotion of rank.

Much of the world was comprised of fools. Godric had once been, perhaps still was, one of them.

Eric lifted an eyebrow. "Oh, you don't have that kind of power."

"Hey, I'm on TV." She smirked ever so slightly before her mouth flatlined once more. "Try me."

"I'm to blame. I should've contained Stan the _second_ Godric went missing—"

"Isabel," the elder vampire interrupted, turning to her and looking her in the eye as her Sheriff. _You have assisted my decisions many times over the past few decades, but I have made this one on my own, and I will not allow you to share its repercussions with me._ He turned back to Flanagan. "I remove myself from all positions of authority."

"Works for me." Her satisfaction deeply contrasted the disappointment and disbelief he felt from Eric. He couldn't blame him. Godric had always defended himself and his child, submitting to no one but his Viking, and now the mist wasn't even allowing him to do that.

Out of the corner of his eye, the girl shifted in her position on the couch, close beside Eric's subordinate, opening her mouth as if to speak.

Her companion tried to stop her, grasping her arm as he addressed her in an undertone. "Sookie, Sookie—"

She stared back, returning the quiet level of his voice. "I _owe_ him."

Whom did she owe? Eric, perhaps? She was under his protection, after all, and he had bonded himself to her. (Godric had never really approved of vampires bonding themselves to humans they did not intend to make Vampire, or of attempting to forge such a bond with another supernatural creature. That sort of an exchange was precious, sacred, meant for a vampire and his child alone, because it could so easily be exploited even between Maker and offspring. But his Viking was known to pursue what he wished, and would not stop until Godric commanded him, and the fog had prevented the ageless boy from caring enough to do so.)

"Miss Flanagan?"

The spokeswoman obliged the girl by looking at her.

"Godric rescued me from a _really large_ rapist—who probably would have killed me too."

Flanagan practically rolled her eyes. "That's nice. Moving on—"

"No, _listen!_" the girl insisted. "And then he rescued _humans_ in that church, plus a whole lotta vampires."

He blinked, slowly. A human was defending him.

A human was... defending... him?

"You think it's a PR mess now? It could'a been a hundred—a _million_ times worse! You should _thank_ him!"

"For getting kidnapped? For attracting a suicide bomber? For _piss-poor judgment?_ I think not."

Eric was out of his chair before Flanagan had finished her sentence, filling Godric's veins with heat as he muffled a snarl behind closed lips, and was halfway across the room before Sookie's companion and Isabel were out of their seats. Again, Godric was not surprised: the berserker had always been quick to defend him when he felt someone had spoken of or addressed his Maker in some unacceptable way.

Isabel reached the Viking first, grabbing his arms and putting herself between him and the object of his indignation. "Don't."

"_Eric."_ There was only one voice in the room that could prevent the berserker from attacking. But why, _why_ did it have to be Godric's? "Doesn't matter."

Eric nodded to show he had heard his Maker, but still Godric's eyes did not leave him until he had resumed his seat.

How many times would he have to tell the Viking not to endanger himself on the account of the ancient boy?

"Tell me about the bombing, please. Every single detail." Flanagan, more composed and apparently focused than Eric.

Godric turned to her, suddenly very, very tired. Reliving the event without the details would be too much for him. But he was obligated to give his account, in the hopes that word of this terrible occurrence would fix what he had not been able to. "A boy walked... in the lair. I thought he was someone's... human companion..."

* * *

"What a fucking fiasco," Flanagan said when he had finished. "You're lucky I don't send you all to the Magister."

A pity. That one's sense of amusement would have provided a good punishment for the ageless child. But none of the others deserved that.

Eric was still looking at him. His Viking's eyes had not left him throughout the entire time he told his tale. He just wished his child wouldn't persist in looking at him with such confusion. He could feel that in the bond—wasn't that enough for Eric?

Flanagan sighed, appearing for the first time to have to collect herself. "Godric, come to my suite and fill out the forms."

The idea struck him that he could perhaps make an apology, so that no one could say he hadn't expressed verbal remorse for his actions. He owed those he knew here that, at least. "Soon. First I have something to say."

Eric shifted forward slightly in his chair, making every muscle in Godric's body as tense as his own appeared to be.

The damnable child licked his lips as he, too, collected himself. "I'm sorry," he began, and was almost surprised to find he could manage what he had once known to be a smile. He looked around at them all: Flanagan, her attendants, the girl, Eric's subordinate, Eric, Isabel... and Eric. His gaze returned to a point on the far wall as he continued. "I apologize for... all the harm I've caused. For all our lost ones... human and vampire." Again he looked at Eric. "I will make amends." His eyes dropped finally, finally, to the floor. "I swear it."

The spreading ice and and the terrible clenching sensation hit him again, together this time, in perhaps half a second after he had finished speaking.

So Eric knew of his intentions.

That was that, then.

"Take it easy—it's just a few signatures." Flanagan rose, patting him on the shoulder before leading her assistants and Isabel out the door. Godric moved to follow them—

But Eric was there, leaning down to him as he had done countless times over their centuries together, and the cold pain worsened considerably. "No." The berserker's voice was much softer than it usually was, already half-choked with agony—but what made him think Godric deserved his protests? What made him think Godric wanted to hear them?

Godric looked up at his child. They were very close, and his eyes ran over every inch of the familiar face just above his. He had touched this face, kissed this face, held this face precious above every other face he had ever seen in his long life. It was perhaps the only face he could never forget, and if there truly was another life waiting for him after life on Earth he knew he would be punished for it in his next existence, but at this moment Godric could care less. He was finished. "Look in my heart."

"You have to listen to me."

"There's nothing to say."

"There _is_."

Godric searched his child's face again, memorizing every tense crease, every wrinkle of experience. In over a thousand years together, nothing had changed. Not the eyes, squinting with their new vampiric gaze up at the moon. Not the nose, adding a leonine quality to his face as he took in the scent of human prey. Not the lips, cushioning his own in thousands of kisses.

Godric wanted Eric to kiss him again, to attempt to enjoy one last tender touch between them before he left purgatory for good and descended to Hell. But he did not have the energy for that, and so he merely lifted his gaze from Eric's mouth to his eyes. "On the roof."

He knew it was only his own momentum that forced Eric to move aside for him as he left the room, shoulders heavy.


	11. Goodbye Godric

Over a thousand years together, together in physical proximity and together while apart, and Eric never thought it would end like this. Whenever his Maker met the True Death in one of his daymares, Godric went down fighting—fighting for the Viking, fighting for himself, sometimes even fighting alongside the berserker for Pam. In Godric's last moments, he was as he had always been in life: determinedly protective, beautifully feral, stunningly powerful. He was drenched in the blood of many of his victims long before he met his own end, and he never stopped trying to weaken the enemy until after the last possible moment.

But, when he at last did die in Eric's dreams, he never died like a vampire. He was never melted into a thousand messy pieces by a stake, never decapitated, never burned. He passed into the underworld like a true berserker, his own blood spreading outward from the center of his chest to join that of his opponents, his eyes on the dark heavens above them as Eric knelt beside him on the stained earth.

Eric had once considered such a death to be noble. Now it sickened him.

It sickened him, because Godric wasn't even _fighting_. He was just standing there on the helicopter pad, gazing eastward like some primitive, sun-worshipping fool, _waiting_ for it to happen—actually _giving himself_ to the sun.

Every vampire the Viking had ever known had begun missing the sun at some point in their long, undead lives. Though he would rarely admit it of his own free will, Eric himself missed the sun, as he still missed his human family. He and Godric had joked about finding ways to safely view the sun with their own eyes, off and on, decades and centuries ago. They had even chased the old myth about faeries together, and chased it more than once. But the fact that vampires and humans still weren't getting along after _thousands_ of years of strife as predator and prey was the most ridiculous reason for meeting the sun the berserker had ever heard. A synthetic beverage wasn't going to break down the natural order in _two fucking years!_ Why couldn't his Maker _see_ that?

Why did Godric even _want_ to break down the natural order in the first place? It was he, after all, who had taught Eric that vampires had been placed above humans when Nature first formed her ranks of predators. He who had said, time and time again, that a human's sole worth to a vampire was its blood. He who had impressed upon the Viking the ultimatums of the afterlife: survive, or die.

And now Death himself wanted to die.

Death... wanted... to—no! _NO!_ Godric couldn't die of his own free will. It was unjustifiable, impossible. Godric would live forever. He had to live forever, because Eric wanted, Eric needed, him to.

The Viking's gaze left his Maker's back for an instant to check on the horizon between the buildings surrounding the Hotel Carmilla: still dark. Good.

Dimly he heard someone ascending the stairs to the rooftop. The wind brought Sookie's unique scent into his nostrils; the blood bond between them swept her concern through his veins.

_Go away. If I can't talk my own Maker out of doing this—although I definitely haven't stopped trying—then you certainly can't. And I can't take your petty human emotions right now. Go away._

_Please just go away._

_Please._

"Two thousand years is enough."

Eric pretended not to hear the exhaustion in his Maker's words, pretended not to feel it making him once again nearly as heavy as they had felt the night before. Two thousand years could never be enough, because just one thousand years with Godric had not been enough. "I can't accept this." The Viking's voice was hoarse, his next breath was ragged, but he couldn't care less. "It's _insanity!_"

"Our _existence_ is insanity." Godric turned his head to look at him at last, his small face made sickly and tired and crippled by the guilt Eric felt pulsing with potent slowness through their bond. A crack deep within the Viking's chest widened further at the sight of it. "We don't belong here."

"But we _ARE_ HERE!"

"It's not right." Godric turned to face him completely, gray eyes wide and earnest even in his lack of energy, and though they now faced each other it seemed to Eric they had only grown farther apart. "We're not right."

The Viking fumbled for something to disprove this new belief that had conquered his Maker. "You taught me there is no right or wrong." He clung to the old lesson like a man dying—and in a way, if Godric was truly dying, then so was he. "Only survival..." His throat closed: finishing the adage, speaking that one word whose sole meaning now was the end of Godric, was almost not possible for Eric, "... or death."

The child blinked at him, slowly, and this simple action was more painful than the most disapproving shake of his head. "I told a lie, as it turns out."

Eric's veins grew hot. _Stop lying to YOURSELF!_

Coming to a decision, he stepped forward, towering over his Maker with all the determined intimidation in his being. He had never threatened Godric, at least not since their earliest months together, and the thought of doing so now further expanded the fault line behind his ribcage. But if Godric was prompted to live because of such a course of action, if Godric was persuaded that Eric still needed his guidance, if Godric was coaxed into thinking Eric still needed to be taught obedience by him... "I will keep you alive by force!" He snarled the words as though his fangs were behind them. He wished he could have made them snap down to convince Godric of his sincerity, but that terrible weight on his shoulders was holding them back...

That damnable sad smile. "Even if you could... why would you be so cruel?"

Something began to splinter inside Eric.

Godric had called him cruel.

Godric felt he was cruel.

In over a thousand years, Eric had never wanted for Godric to see him that way. He was Godric's _child_, for Odin's sake, Godric's protector from leg irons and brands and all the things to which a slave might be subjected. He was Godric's companion, Godric's shield from assault even when his Maker thought he was capable of defending himself against memories the Viking would never know about.

Godric had called him cruel.

So Godric truly did want to die, then.

They had stood together on the roof for quite a while before Sookie came, and in those too-short minutes Eric had mentioned every excuse and lesson and belief in his repertoire. Now he fumbled back through thousands of memories, searching for something he hadn't used, some conversation he had once shared with his Maker, one that could fix everything that had gone wrong in his creator's mind.

But Eric the Viking had nothing left.

He opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed and opened it again, and for once it was not his pride that he was laboring to beg through._ "Godric, don't do it."_ He pleaded it in Swedish. His native tongue was the most honest language he knew.

The eyes that looked back at him were nearly dead, but when his Maker spoke back to him in his own parlance, his words were filled with the conviction and sincerity of a loved one who was actually living. _"There are centuries of faith and love between us."_

_I love you above all others._

Yes, Godric wanted to die.

Godric wanted to die.

Whatever had been breaking inside Eric's chest shattered. His eyes closed as his throat began to ache; the muscles in his face and across his shoulder blades grew tense as he lowered his head.

Nothing, no thought, no vocal implication, could hurt this much.

The end of Godric, when it came, could not hurt this much.

"_Oh, please! Please!"_ Eric was sobbing even before he dropped to his knees at the feet of his creator. He wanted to cling to him, to make Godric _feel_ his tears and shred his own hopelessness with them, but he did not have the strength for that. He felt the gaze of the one who meant more to him than anything in the world rest on him as warm wet rivers spilled down over his cheeks. He tried again, a longer phrasing of his behest: _"Please, Godric!"_

The ancient vampire's clipped accent revealed only the old promise: _"Father... Brother... Son."_

A glimpse of a savage boy with tangled hair and blood dripping down his chin flickered behind Eric's eyelids for a brief second, and he wept at the loss of that child who had taught him so much.

"Let me go."

No. Godric was going to go back down to the Viking's hotel room with him, and he was going to stay with him on this Earth, sun-free, forever. Not Eric's forever, but _their_ forever and forever and forever.

Unless...

Godric had no desire to live anymore. But he could not pass away by himself. He was too small, too prone to reliving his most terrible memories... and Eric refused to live without him.

The Viking lifted his head, breath hitching, struggling to compose himself. "I won't let you die alone."

"Yes, you will."

Eric's body bowed forward against his will as he sobbed anew, and some small part of their bond told him that his Maker was barely a hair's breadth away. The space between them felt leagues wide.

The one time in his long life that the Viking had ever actually wanted to die, and Godric was going to make him live.

He wished the thought that perhaps Godric didn't need him anymore would kill him.

Tiny, cool fingers were running through his hair in the old gesture of comfort. They descended his neck, moving outward to grip his shoulder, and tightened there, pressing gently, giving him a little shake.

Slowly, oh, so slowly, he lifted his head and looked Godric in the eye. His pain was distorted and reflected back at him.

Godric spoke slowly, and Eric knew that this small, apologetic smile his Maker was giving him would be the last of his smiles that he would ever see while his creator was still alive.

"As your Maker... I command you."

Eric had always hated this power. He had detested Godric for using it in their beginning, and Godric's sparing use of it afterward, whenever those occasions came, had been the worst betrayal of trust he could ever commit. He knew Godric was well aware of this, knew Godric had at one time loved him enough to hate his own ability to take control of his own child's motor skills. But the command was uttered softly, not nearly as harshly as it might have been, and so the Viking knew Godric loved him still.

_And as your child, I command you to..._

Godric had laughed at him when he first tried, when he was barely hours old, to order his Maker to bring Hrolf and Gunnar back from the dead too. When he and Godric grew closer, in friendship and onward, it became a game to lessen his resentment of that one power over him that he could never evade. They first used it while sparring and hunting, and later, as Godric grew more comfortable in his own skin, it also became a tender prompting device during lovemaking.

_As your child, I command you to..._

But Godric's will was pressing in upon him, and all he could do was slowly quirk an eyebrow and return his creator's smile.

Godric's thumb stroked his cheek as he stood, and all the while the Viking's eyes never left his Maker, committing his last physical appearance to memory.

Godric stared at the ground where Eric had been kneeling as though he half-expected him to still be there, and the berserker wished he still was.

The walk across the rooftop to the top of the stairs was far too brief, and when he looked back at Godric, the boy he once thought could never die was already staring eastward.

A small hand took his, and its skin held a human warmth.

Eric looked down at Sookie, almost surprised to see her standing there. He could barely feel his blood coursing through her veins—his own were too filled with Godric's cold longing.

"I'll stay with him," she said, and he felt her grieving with him. "As long as it takes."

Eric nodded as the idea clung to him, and he clung back.

Now, at least, Godric would not be alone.

He took one last look at the boy with whom he had spent the great majority of his thousand years of life, and after a pause that was not long enough descended the stairs. The journey to his hotel room spanned eons, and when he finally reached it he sat on the edge of his bed and removed his shirt to prevent the fresh blood tears he could feel coursing down his cheeks from soiling it.

And in the several minutes of blood-induced blindness that followed, he could feel Godric's guilt lifting from his shoulders at last, replaced by something that was almost... peace.

* * *

And Godric _was_ feeling that guiltless calm that he had so often dreamed about wash over him as he stood on the rooftop, staring eastward. He had hurt Eric, but there was no way his death would not have hurt his Viking, so there was no use in dwelling on it. Soon he would never hurt anyone again.

He was feeling this tranquility because he was finally, _finally_, going to see the sun.

The sun! He had gazed at the stars every night for over two thousand years, and when the incredible advancements in technology that had occurred over the past couple of centuries had finally, officially, proved that the sun was just like these tiny balls of light, Godric had been one of the most overjoyed and grateful vampires on the planet for this fact, because it meant that although he could not safely view the real thing, he could stare at thousands of minute copies of it for hours if he so wished.

And, except for when the fog had enshrouded him more thickly these past few months, the last seventy years or so of his life had been mostly spent doing just that.

There was the sound of soft shoes traversing slightly gravelly pavement as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl move across the rooftop to stand perhaps ten feet away from him. He had been drowning in Eric's grief seconds ago, and had barely registered her arrival to his place of death because of this. It would have been impossible to have Eric with him when he died—even if he had chosen to stake or decapitate himself, a method much safer for Eric physically, his child's mind would shatter if he watched him die—but this human was loyal to his cause, and she was here with him now. If he had still believed his death would fix the strife between vampires and humans, he would have asked her to help spread the word of his death, as a final, peaceful message of coexistence.

Instead, he chose to try to give her some small measure of reassurance in return for her loyalty: "It won't take long. Not at my age."

"You know, it wasn't very smart," she said, "the Fellowship of the Sun part?"

He nodded. "I know. I thought it might... _fix_ everything somehow. But I don't think like a vampire anymore." Thoughts of the Fellowship and what they believed in made him turn his head to look at her. "Do you believe in God?"

"Yes."

He turned to face her fully, as he had faced Eric just minutes ago, and guilt for the millions of lives he had taken tore at the back of his brain, struggling to escape the prison the anticipation of seeing the sun had put it in. "If you're right... how will he punish me?"

She shook her head, the tiniest hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, as though she pitied him for his belief that he would suffer. "God doesn't punish. God forgives."

"I don't deserve it." His voice was slightly hoarse at the thought that perhaps, after two thousand years of suffering, his death would at last relieve him from the burden of disgrace. "But I hope for it."

She nodded, almost encouragingly. "We all do."

With that question answered, Eric once again slipped into his mind. They had lived together for the long latter half of Godric's life, and with every decision he made while they were apart he thought of what Eric would have done, whether he would have agreed with him or, as it seemed more and more often lately, whether he would oppose his decisions outright. They were joined in ways greater than any marriage, stronger than any human bond, and his death would tear Eric apart. Eric would need to be comforted, but Pam was not here to provide that.

Pam was not here, but this girl was. Godric had felt Eric's attraction to her through his bond with the Viking as his Maker when she and Eric had begun to talk after she had been assaulted by the unfamiliar female vampire in the nest. Eric, in his unrestrained enjoyment of earthly pleasures, had taken advantage of his attraction to many humans over the centuries, but what Godric had felt from him towards this human was stronger than a simple night's lust. Perhaps she, while in Dallas at least, could provide Eric with the comfort he would need... and maybe, just maybe, watch over the berserker when Godric was gone. "You will care for him?" Godric smiled, feeling almost embarrassed now that he asked so much of the girl—the Viking was not an easy one to keep in check—and looked over to the top of the stairs to communicate his meaning. "Eric."

She shook her head, although he could see by the incredulity on her face that she was not necessarily dismissing his request. "I'm not sure—you know how he is."

Godric thought of the stubbornness in his child that he had never been able to break, and his smile widened fondly even as his embarrassment was confirmed. "I can take the blame for that too."

"Maybe not." She was shaking her head again, smiling herself now. "Eric's pretty much himself."

_As I am Eric's._

Godric started to agree with her—but then the faintest sensation of warmth spread over the left side of his face and neck like a blanket.

He swallowed, eyes widening slightly in disbelief, and slowly, slowly turned his face toward the eastern sky that was finally beginning to lighten.

So he really was going to embrace the sun. For the briefest of moments, he had foolishly suspected that the golden orb would not make its presence known—that the golden orb, all these hundreds of years, had been a lie to keep his kind at the fearful mercy of a terrible myth.

He really was going to see the sun!

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl watching him. "Are you very afraid?" Her voice shook, as though it was she who had reason to fear the coming heat.

"No." He looked at her, smiling as he fully realized that there was no fear in him of the sun, not now, and a wordless breath of amazement escaped him. "No! I'm full of joy."

She shook her head, and this time it seemed the action was in protest. "But the pain..."

"I _want_ to burn!"

She swallowed, and when she spoke her voice was thick. "Well... I'm afraid for you."

He stared.

Never, in all his long life, had he expected this.

"A human with me at the end..." he watched clear drops fall down her cheeks, "... and human tears. Two _thousand_ years, and I can still be surprised." He laughed softly, nodding to her: she had been right. "In this I see God."

But the sun was still calling to him, and he turned to it as a tiny semicircle of light broke over the horizon.

And that light, more than he had ever tried to remember or imagine, was beautiful. Red, orange, yellow, and every hue in-between. It was the gold of Eric's hair, the white of unburdened peace... The sight of it in modern photographs and films had rimmed his eyes with blood tears on many occasions, but though he shed no tears now the sight affected him tenfold. His throat closed up so tightly that, even if he had not been about to die, he would nonetheless never be able to speak again.

The sun's warmth, too, had grown in intensity, pulling him towards it, and he went to it freely, motioning for the girl to stay back. He could feel himself burning, but, perhaps because his flesh had been like ice for so long, no scent of it accompanied the sensation... The desire to feel the heat of the orb on his heart came over him, and he slowly unbuttoned and removed his shirt as he walked across the rooftop, allowing the fabric to slip from his fingers as he continued on to its edge.

And the last voice he heard was the girl's, still partly broken with her miraculous tears: "Goodbye, Godric."

He held his arms out to the rising sun, and the most intense heat he had ever felt consumed him. The increase of light was hard on his weakened eyes, but he resisted closing them until the last possible moment.

He felt the hot sun burn through his heart first, as he hoped it would.

And it was beautiful.


	12. The Handling of Grief

The house was one of the first things Eric had bought as a vampire "fresh out of the coffin" two years ago: a sprawling Edwardian with sweeping staircases and dozens of elegantly-furnished rooms that he and Pam didn't even use most of the time. He had known the bills would be high from the moment they first stood on the stone walkway leading to the front door, but as he had followed her through the various chambers, listening to her snarky drawl as she corrected the trembling, sweaty human realtor on the best ways to refurbish the place, he also knew he had to buy it for her. She had always loved big houses, loved decorating them especially—but he had still enjoyed watching her beg him in private for it.

But now he did not enjoy watching her face as she opened the door for him; she closed it behind him while he rested his inheritance on the floor just inside the front hallway.

Pam had been crying. She must have redone her makeup, for there were no visible traces of grief on her face, but underneath it Eric could still smell the blood tears. She wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around her.

And as he stood there in his child's arms, feeling her loss merge with his, he could no longer distract himself with thoughts of their home. Godric was gone, and Eric would never feel at home anywhere again, because there was no longer any possibility that Godric could be anywhere with him.

"I knew it the second he was gone." Her voice did not shake, but Eric knew through the bond they shared that she was still grieving. And why shouldn't she? Godric had been the greatest vampire in Eric's history—the entire _world_ should mourn for what he had lost.

He swallowed. "I know." Slowly he pressed his face to her neck, and closed his eyes as her soft golden curls surrounded him. But he would not allow her to support him. He was not weak.

But Godric had been weak when he died. It was sacrilege, but it was also the truth.

Godric had been weak.

Something deep in Eric's chest spasmed, and he muffled a noise of pain in his throat before it could escape.

He felt Pam's arms tighten around him. He felt her inhale, but it was a long time before she said softly, "Let's go upstairs." Gently she laid a hand on his arm and began to lead him toward the main staircase—away from what he had let go of near the front door.

A second of blind panic jolted deep in his stomach. "Wait." He blurred from her side and returned, Godric's old sea bag in hand. He knew she wouldn't recognize it—she hadn't known Godric was leaving until Eric told her, after the Viking and his Maker had said their goodbyes—but she did not ask where it came from, and Eric found he was glad of that.

They ascended the stairs in silence.

Eric entered his room without seeing it, sitting on the edge of the bed and setting the bag down at his feet. He sensed more than saw his daughter perch beside him as he opened the sack and, brushing aside the bundles of their letters to Godric, pulled out a small white shirt with long sleeves.

Godric's scent hit him even before he had pressed the cloth to his lips, eyes closed and brow creasing, and taken the first breath. He took his most recent memories of Godric as deeply into himself as possible, struggling to match them with the Godric that had once run rampant through his veins.

Godric, his smile full of blood as he praised Eric's first kill. Godric, his small body trembling in Eric's arms as they coupled for the first time.

Godric, his eyes tired and almost dead. Godric, his small body crumpled on the floor of Eric's hotel room. Godric, his entire being consumed with a terrible heat that Eric could feel from three floors below him, just before Eric felt nothing from him at all.

The shirt slipped from Eric's fingers; the fabric clung to his lap like a shroud for burial. _"Oh, please! Please!"_ He turned and buried his face in the soft, smooth curves of Pam's chest, sobbing, finally permitting her to bear his weight as he begged in Swedish. But he no longer knew who he was begging to.

He felt Pam stroke his hair, felt her grief, and later felt himself inside her as she pressed him back against the bed and moved with him, but not once did he feel the tremor of a sob disturb the cold stone of her body.

* * *

_Author's Note: Huge, huge thanks are due to everyone who gave me their thoughts on this story. Novelizing and embellishing "Timebomb" and "I Will Rise Up" was quite an accomplishment for me personally. Although I didn't always reply to everyone's reviews, every comment that was made was dear to me and, I hope, used to make this retelling the best I could make it. So, again, I thank you._


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